Share your food, dude

Eating and playing after praising our Lord,

The pastor gave me a disturbing word:

Some of the kids in this very lunch line

Would not eat again for quite some time.

Many come to church there just for the food,

They come for the table, is that any good?

These children's needs are easily met,

Some cheap pilau, some games, and they're set.

Of course we will feed the neighbors who come,

The rice was enough for firsts and then some.

But how shall we feed the affluent ones?

The doctors and lawyers, their daughters and sons

Have different hungers, more deftly concealed,

What vacancy is filled before it's revealed?

We share at the table like children, we say,

"The bread and the wine that we share today,

remind us of Jesus' life and his death.

Partaking, we too have death and new breath."

But somehow after our cannibals' fare,

I still have some room in my belly to spare.

I can still go to lunch, I still eat a full meal,

Eating with all of my usual zeal.

Perhaps the last supper is only our first,

Without filling our bellies or slaking our thirst

The living bread builds us ever more able.

We live life in the habit of sharing our table.

Out of reach

Yesterday we had company. They were the best kind--the kind who brings their own meat and ugali from your favorite eating place. We needed a bigger plate, so I went to get it from the kitchen. Walking back to the living room, I held it a bit too casually, and soon bits of it were all over the hallway floor. I was angry, realizing I had just the one chance to fail but could have used the plate many more times if I had succeeded in safely transporting that porcelain (or some cheap plasticky version) disc to the living room.
It passes us by all the time. Sometimes we notice, sometimes it catches us sleeping. But the moment is ever within our grasp as it ever evades.
A month ago, I wrote a blog post. Then, some time after (which reminds me), it is today. Now. Of course. But time's Hermeneutical wings have carried it faster than I expected, and another term is coming to a close.
Here, we take three months on, one off. Jan-March, we've had classes and life at school. April will be our break. Next week are our final exams already. I like the new students. They are very childish, not yet molded by their uniforms. Their first grade this term will be our final exam, a welcome into the easily failed setup of the school. We will see how well they do. They can't always distinguish the rules of adding and multiplying positive and negative numbers.
Peace, my friends. Grasp it.