A “Warning” I guess: The following long poem uses an extended metaphor of God eating those who desire to be truly consumed by something other than the current fast food philosophies and religions of our time. As poetry often attempts, I am attempting to come at Truth from a plethora of various angles and side streets. In this way, some may relate to readers and “catch” and some may not. Some may now, some may later. In addition, the length of this poem reflects the fact that eating, drinking, thirsting, and food are not only important, perhaps the most important elements in any culture or human life but are also used frequently and strongly as metaphor. Various Biblical writers and The Christ himself, use these metaphors, symbols, and even actually use food, wine, water, fasting and feasting as spiritual and religious disciplines and ways of living a truly and completely “Good” human life. God Himself uses food and drink in His own love offerings to us and as symbol and metaphor for our souls. However, this poem is mostly about the facts that we have forgotten; that God also demands actual food and drink to others less fortunate, and the metaphoric subsistence of our souls in our required sacrifices to Him.
Eaten
By Jane Tawel
February 1 – March 15, 2019
The incremental decay of our belief
Festering by now
Bacteria-laden and rotten
At the bottom of the maggoty worship mount;
With all the slaves that Abraham left behind below;
While Abe and Isaac took the food and water with them;
Becoming themselves, holy Food
To be eaten by God.
As we offer the unholy, unwholesome sacrifices
Of our unearned bucks and gamey games, poached and rotting
On the idol-strewn pews, while we,
Rancid, perfumed meat praying next to our hunting guns,
gorge on pilfered blessings.
And while we bless our own bought bounty in the
bistros of our imagined coziness with God —
–Judah and Ishmael wander in the wilderness,
Famished for meaning and manna.
As our corpses engorge themselves on the
More-ness of our filched American Idols,
The “ingodwetrust” religion of corporation-run focus groups
Feels angry and afraid that those hungry for righteousness
Stand outside our alarm-strewn kitchen windows looking in;
Making the bile of our chosen status rise up at the
Less-ness of their browned and stewing children.
When all we really ingodwetrust in, is the unbiblical belief
That pagans should not abort.
It is so easy to digest the unborn,
Never having to see their open maw-ed mouths,
Hungry for the least little lint lining our pockets.
The unborn are untested and untasting of
the confections of our capitalistic constitutions.
But we, pampered and as eyeless as new taters, deliver
far too many chemically modified tots.
Our humanistic individually wrapped soul-food
worships the laden self-shelfs packed full and breaking under the burden of
too many, too much, too useless – our – us—
–Healthy-wealthy leftovers.
We have no other cause than
Refusing the aborted ones to follow
The Pie-ed Piper to Nirvana,
While the planet sags
Like a bag of rotting bananas
No-longer fit for consumption by even us devolving apes.
We now seek exile from a world we fumigated
One indulgence at a time,
While we stood by and witnessed to our own weight gain.
So empty are the containers of our hearts, that
truly hungry exiled nations have to bomb us to get our attention;
Or be served up as appetizers teasing us in our slobbering anticipation
of an imagined heavenly meal, they aren’t invited to share.
Oh, the finger foods of Jesus’ hors d’oeuvres are now
Outside the work of our idle idolized own tastes.
And The World says daily, “Bite me”.
And so, we do;
Taking bites from the rotten core of that same apple.
It is so easy to deny the 6 million and more and more, and more
Of That Good Man’s Relatives;
Killed by a Church that claims a Jew’s death paid it all.
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
Your check is still outstanding.
And you don’t get to keep the Server’s tips
Without serving it up as the Server did.
As I ratchet up my worldly consumer debts,
How can I claim that somehow, Someone paid for my final funeral feast
before I actually die?
That kind of fast food will kill you, one heart attacked at a time.
You can’t pay for the funerals of people who just won’t die.
God has to kill you before He can consume you. Ask Isaac.
God won’t eat meat with blood still in it,
Ask Moses and the Levites.
I must spill my blood, as The Son did;
Before I can be eaten;
Making myself a tender, “well-done, good and faithful” meat
worthy to meet my Maker.
Like Elisha’s widow, uncircumcised, unknown,
I ask with understandable fear of the fire, nonetheless, I ask:
“Can You? Will You?
Test me? Taste me?
Multiply the oil that simmers me?
Ah! My God and my Chef–Use the meager ingredients of my soul
And add Your anointed oil,
So that You might eat me.”
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord, my soul to eat
If I should wake before I die
I pray to be God’s apple pie.
God, forgive my poor table manners,
Thinking that I don’t even need to bother to take Isaac up the hill
Since Jesus #lovesmethisIknow.
I won’t clean my unholy mouth with the serviettes of serving the Savior,
Oh no!
Oh, no we have stopped wolfing down The Word;
Stopped marinating our souls in righteousness; we have long stopped longing; and
Stopped killing the fatted lambs of our lives;
Ever since we started starving ourselves to death
With our bulimic anorexic Faith
that throws up the good with the bad,
we have stopped partaking in Your daily gluten heavy bread.
We have made the world so hungry,
Ever since we started convincing the masses that
one Lamb-chop is enough
For a ravenous, consuming God!
What holy feasts are these?
When Santa grows fatter and Uncle Sam is obese
while God looks anorexic!
And the disciples don’t even bother passing out
The fish and loaves to the multitudes;
Instead the apostles are in spin class,
flying first class with their Disneyland pass.
Instead the wannabes sit as food critics, hiding behind the apron strings of Jesus,
Watching chefs on TV rather than buying the street food of the homeless;
Trusting that there will be enough of just one Peace of Piece of Christ to go around.
We mini-me-messiahs gnaw on the edges of Gnosticism
Ignoring the need to nosh on Tanakh;
Ignoring the requirement to fatten up ourselves enough for
God to see and consume us.
We keep skipping ahead to the dessert
Created on a dare by the Nouveau Roman Cuisine Cook Saint Paul.
Hey all you diners,
Those final additions to the Menu
are meant to be the whipped cream on top, folks,
Not the entree.
The Inheritor of the Real Cookbook, the Son of Chef,
Offers up the A La King special:
“Fatted Calf of Covenant Served with a sliced side of
Hot Crossed Messianic Passover Lamb.”
But our mouths are full of bargain bought plasticized oleo
And the precious oil bestowed
On the bridesmaids,
Is considered oh-so-yesterday’s testament to good fuel.
We honor the ones who make money selling Christ’s cross,
claiming the titles but remaining nice fat babies
sucking on the teats of Mother Church,
never working at the hard task of fishing like grown men
never throwing out the heavy nets of faith
never growing the incisor-ed teeth of Truth
but sitting on altered perches
raking in the dough
with no desire to feed the hungry with real bread, real perch.
Well, you’ve eaten in the halls of the gourmands
but one day that Son of man
will demand to see the recipes we all made in secret.
“Lord, when did we see you hungry?
Lord, when did we hear you thirst?”
God cries: “I Thirst!”
Christ shakes His blood-marinated head,
“Oh, I have food in those unsung, unknown, starved morsels of men,
those wee women, and crumbs of children
that you well -known hoarders and self-serve busy-busies
know nothing of.”
And God cries, “Feed Me!”
And so the feast of fools, once
Stomped into wine by the nail-scarred feet of Christ;
Topped off with the risen bread-body of Christ;
Goes untasted, untested, undrunk by us,
While the sugary cheap-grace bread-pudding and
watered- down wine
Fail to keep us alive.
And while the calorie-free dessert is served up in the pews,
Promising it will taste almost heavenly;
the hellish desert of arid wasted-ness within and without grows larger and hotter.
Spiritual food creating thirst not living water.
And the mirages of our salvation
Keep leading us ahead to a false heaven
While the Earth boils and toils.
And God dines elsewhere.
We have stopped maintaining our weightiness
On the required kosher-ed ketogenics of
The Lamb as Protein IAM Diet.
We prefer to let us eat cake
Instead of swallowing whole
the Ezekiel Scroll-based smorgasbord.
We think we are safer eating from
our FDA-approved, second amendment earned trophy-letters of that
latter day Saint Paul
no red letter signage to create hunger
but the dulcet tones of brown and green, rot and mold concealed.
We are encouraged to sit on our fat rears
keeping a food journal about our own decaying feelings and worries,
Instead of following The Jew’s Recipe for True Life.
Out there serving it up as He did
On the food lines of Heaven on earth.
You know,
The one about following The One
And dying to our own self-inflicted wounds;
The one about giving it all away;
The one about no other gods and no personal effects
Except the effects of Love?
You know that one? That is no joke, no fortune cookie faith.
True Love proposed to me
and like an engagement ring in a champagne glass,
Surprised me with His offer, to marry my starved heart to His.
But only if I offer the burnt sacrifice of self,
So that I might Rise like a sweet scent —
Like a cinnamon yeast roll baking in the
Furnace of my serving platelets
Rising to fill forever, the nostrils of Abraham’s God.
Oh, ever since we got on that kick about that Diet of Worms that
Martin Luther customized and almost died from;
We have forgotten about our sure future treat of being the snack of worms.
We prefer the cheap-date Jesus with his cheap-grace Savor-y fastfoodmeal ticket and
A home without any chores or clean up on our part.
Oh those fun Yuletide eggnogs, buried to be found later,
Hatched in an easy-bake Easter ham and oh so ready to bless the food cuz
Jesus will cook it, serve it, wash up after
While we celebrate winning the lottery ticket to eternity.
And we can take our doggie bags of faith to our new home in the sky,
Like all those good Gentile but not gentle dogs who begged at
Jesus’ table.
Our theology, reduced to “to-go” sack lunches
While I-saac munches
Next to Rehab, Gomer, and Zipporah.
We zip-lock bag up our plastic menorahs
and reduce our beliefs to the guile of Jacob
and the greed of Esau
with a little salt of Lot’s’wife thrown in for flavor.
Are we too far comfortable in hell
To live homeless in Bethel?
Will we ever fast
For that which lasts?
And not for the 30 -day diet
Where-by it
Starves the body
But feeds not the soul?
Bread cannot rise without the sacred yeast of death
And grapes will not ferment without being crushed.
Justice will not flow if we don’t give a dam,
About unclean water for a thirsty dirty world.
And Christos is outside the wall trying to knock it down
To immigrate and dine with us.
And Religion marches on and on and on and on
While the Sheep run out of pasture and the grain rots and the grapes dry up
And The Water that heals all thirst
Is plasticized on Sunday
And on Monday the oil will not mix with it
As it sticks to the wings of the sea-sparrows
Instead of lighting the empty lamps we carry.
And Eden has nothing good left in her to be eaten.
So we keep eating Saccharine -sweet blood and fiber-less bread on Sunday
And our Soul-food is Weak, tepid, spice-less stuff,
That would never make any one think we were drunk on God.
We pay up big time to the sermonizing sous-chefs who preach about
what’s good on the menu like making laws against people not like us
And what to avoid like the Beatitudes;
Cutting and pasting a nutrition free diet plan from
The Bible’s hard to swallow manna, in order
to fit into the American dream-siccles we buy from
The nice-cream trucks imprisoned by their lack of faith.
And while highly paid motivational coaches of calorie free theology
still expect to get a King’s ransomed big tip someday
we are overcharged on our credit lines with He who holds the Scales.
And still the Church’s 9 x 13 inch casseroles of catechism
are bought with bitter bonds.
A long while back I got that party invitation
From A Jesus that just wants to Party with us in the pews and Dance like David,
While wine gushes, flooding from the baptismal fount
And fresh baked baguettes and caviar fill the offering plates.
I accepted the invitation at the time
But since then, I have struggled to fit into new clothes like
old wine in new wineskins,
While Continuing to gorge my soul on His Feast of Famine.
That first taste of Christ whetted my appetite
And now friends and family point out that my mouth is dirty
Smeared with bits of Christ’s blood.
But I point out that my hands are still far too clean.
The professionals all agree though:
“Come instead for a quick Sunday tasteless, wineless Brunch at our food-free service.
Let’s quickly eat some gluten-free consumer friendly atom-sized wafers of Jesus
So we can all head home for the real Communion
of booze and nachos and wings to watch the real-fun and buff gods in the Big Game–
Go Team, Our Idols!”
While the world starves for a God who ain’t playing around with His Food.
We just need to keep adding on gods to the menu, I guess.
The number is up to at least Four now: Trinity of Three plus their Mom.
Gobble, gobble, gobble, since we’ve added a turkey and bald eagle as well.
And even those are not ever enough to convince us we truly crave the pollution-freed and
The Tree to Table Meal
Of Yahweh’s Kingdom Come.
Ah, Creator-Chef,
Take me from Eden
To Eaten.
I am Hagar-ed by my flight
From Your Truth.
While the flights of wine keep flowing
Keeping us high,
My flight to you is grounded.
The proverbial wine of violence
Is headier than the Baptizer’s head
Lopped and served up on a garnished garish platter;
While Your water turned to outrageously expensive wine was
Offered me.
Messiah took his time making a cross-hatch next to the names
Of those with
reservations at the 12-Star Kingdom Wedding Feast.
But we are all too busy to come and dine
except for a short time.
Peter the maître d’
stands at the gate wondering
Why so many don’t bother to show up on time for
Their reserved Eternity-pool Jewish-mikveh-ized seats,
The whole Kingdom Hall, bought out at great price
By The Bridegroom.
That old joke about Jewish food being bland
Wasn’t a joke for the Jew from Nazareth
As He served up God.
Fish and bread for the multitudes were just the Costco-sized samples
Enticing us to pay the price for sharing in the meal-Life of
The spitted Lamb, marinated in tears and blood,
Swallowed whole by the Sin-a -men he bore,
Brought out of the stone-fired oven,
Smelling of sweet sacrifice,
Ascending to become Sous-chef
Forever at the right hand of The Chef,
Creating masterpieces
In the serving staff.
Ah, Abraham and Sarah –
If you can still bear to look down on us, your children, now,
Please help me crawl back onto the wilderness altar, a sacrificial daughter,
Subsisting only on Your Substance,
My substance only for Your Children’s subsistence.
Make me willing, as Your Son Isaac was,
To die thirsty,
To cry as your Son and God’s Son did,
“I Thirst!”
I fast!
For Love
Of The Lord.
Create in me a new heart, Oh,Yahweh, a heart that
Wants You to eat it completely,
A heart inhaled by Your Spirit,
A private sacrifice attended by Only You.
God, eat me.
Ah, Father Abraham and Mother Sarah,
My limbs have become so weak with ego
I can barely lift The Cup of Christ to my lips.
My psyche is
Fueled by the Saul-isms of The Chosen Ones Part Two.
I need Holy Fire to consume me,
Instead of the lie of a one-time for all sacrifice by that other Son of Ruth,
She the one who lived because she gleamed the kernels of God’s truth.
Yes, That Son did what Isaac did not have to do
Then.
But later, oh later, Isaac, Ruth and
All sons and daughters must be eaten up
By The Fiery Mouth of God.
Consummation is the only Communion with You.
Your Holy Maw is the only orifice into
Your Eternal Promised Land of Feasting.
Just as You ate Your Son,
God, eat me.
May I starve myself
To gain the fasted weightiness of Your Son.
Let me char the
The choicest morsels of my life,
Sacrificed, shaken and stirred in terrified worship of You.
Cannibalize me, Oh God,
As You did your only Son.
That by Your devouring me
I may devour Your Son’s own body and blood – His True Life-force;
Cannibalized into Your Bounty now, this moment,
As it will be forever.
The Psalmist’ hymn: “Oh, Elohim! “You alone are my portion”.
I add to and cry, “Adonai! Make of me Your portion.
.
Oh, Great Creative Genius, IAM
Today I am sending you back the ram
caught in the thicket of my sinful days on earth.
Thank you so much
But I need You to imbibe me such
that I may truly gobble up
Messiah’s bread and cup.
As I ingest You, today
I pray;
Eat me,
Completely,
Oh, God.
Jane Tawel 