A Positively Poetic Priest

9/5/08 It is a long table The banquet table meant for all Like the path less traveled The pure distance cannot be measured It stretches into infinity Depending on your place and vision As in the plain regions The table stretches off for miles Letting people see each other See the differences and similarities See the unbounded nature Of human population But as those in the mountains know Sometimes hills obscure the view Leaving infinity to the sky And imagination to the earth Showing only those who you really know Or at least imagine so But as the classic author writes You can only really know Your own story The chair that is placed for you Cannot be occupied by me For as you know the place before you I know the place laid for me For here, the cup is not a chalice Nor is it white, black or gold The plate is painted lovingly And the bowl is chipped But your plate might be stone And your cup jade The magnitude of choices...

After years of being a Christian and working with the food pantry, Sara Miles finally comes out to her mother about being a Christian. Her mother had been an atheist most of her life and stood against the destructive components of the Christian church. But Sara finally decided to share with her mother about what she loved about Christianity over lunch. "It wasn't official Eucharist. It was real communion, with all the incomplete, stupid, and aching parts still there. Made by human hands, out of meat and hope, incarnate: what the Russian mystics called "a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, where none are left behind."" (278)