"You Are What You Eat"

(Thoughts that flowed from a difficult lectionary Scripture, John 6:51-58, and a mood to write!)

The brass tray was held briefly in front of the little girl and her dimpled hand reached out for the most perfect cube of bread that she could see. It was such a tiny bite. She tried to carefully lift a glass cup filled with grape juice from the next tray. Sigh … she did it again. She tapped the cup against another one, making a noise that turned her father’s head toward her. It reminded her of what she had always been told … that she had never really been a very careful child. She tried to drink the little bit of grape juice but always, ALWAYS there was some left in the bottom of the small glass cup. She never felt nourished … never satisfied. By the time that she went back to the pew, she had forgotten the taste of the bread and juice.

Later, there were times in the girl’s life when it seemed too hard and too much to ‘eat’ and ‘drink’. Times when she dreaded going through the motions (would she go to hell for doing that?). Times when the bread was no more than a wafer that had no taste. It stuck to the roof of her mouth. Yes, it was too hard for her to eat something that was not palatable and drink that which did not quench her thirst. Too hard.

The young girl who felt as if all things were too difficult and too much, relaxed as she grew older. The little child who yearned to be careful (but who never really was) and who wanted to remember the taste of the bread and juice, is now a woman who has heard “Eat my flesh … drink my blood.” She knows that these words can be too much for children to hear. She smiles as she remembers the words of her mother, “You are what you eat.” And with that, she rips off a chunk of bread and soaks it in the juice and becomes as messy as a child can be. If the juice drips on her hand, so be it. If she must chew the piece of bread on her walk back to the pew and chew even more as she is seated, that is OK.

She has grown into savoring the moment, smelling the juice, tasting the bread, feeling the stickiness on her hand, looking at the crumbs on the floor. It is a not-so-careful thing for sure. Messy. It can be too hard for some and too routine for others, but her silent prayer is that she might become more of what she has just eaten, even if the thoughts of what we are asked to eat are, at times, hard to digest.