“Our Name at the Table”

© James A. Campbell, 2020

We live at the table of the Lord. We all have our place. When we mess up, we still have our place. When our name bears fruit and all is well, when we feel “fully alive,” blessed unto the glory, the beauty of the day, it matters most to bring it home, to bring it to the table, to share delight and kindness In the breaking of the bread and the pouring of wine.

One day, amidst the silliness of who should sit where, the one at the head of the table seized the moment, choosing to wash in love each one’s feet and then with the world weighing heavy, he took the bread of the ages and the wine of the harvest, and gave it to them saying “take unto yourself” and behold in constant memory, who I am and have been at the table, the never ending table of homecoming.

Then he was gone. No. he was dead. And it was a dark dying, exposing within every human soul the ability to turn beauty into primal hate, wonder into accusing fear and home into shadowed hiding places of shame, blame and an appetite for sweet revenge.

There was no light in the house that night. Everyone had scattered and hope had escaped through the venting wounds of bitterness in the vows to never trust again. Silence entombed the dining chairs and table as out the windows, sirens blared in the endless chase of crime and disease. In truth, when the master died, all at the table died with him. He was put in a tomb and they in despair crawled into a hole. There are many ways to die with a pulse.

And so with the advent of new light across the canvas of another day, one of the walking dead of the cold table, found her way in forced steps, moving on in sigh spirit when there is nothing in you, save that someone had to do it.

That is when it happened and often does, that burst from the energy of love, that fire that has no meaning or explanation in the equations of black holes, light year stars and the orbiting planets we probe in hopes we are not alone. She heard whispered “Mary” in the soul voice of the head of the table. In that naming, a piece of love was torn from the fabric of God and given as days before bread and wine were given. Love’s entanglement, which knows the truth that time is an illusion and death is a riddle, breathed upon Mary her name. . .and . . . as in the beginning of the eternal now . . it was good.

Blessed, fully alive are those who live in the wake of their Easter naming, the calling of and calling forth to arise and go from all our deaths including the last that pends before us; to whisper, as whispered to us, the names of others in their dying of every sort, inviting them to the table of God’s love where they have a place and a reason to be alive.