Dear All,

At this time in our Sunday liturgies there is a focus on food, fish, manna, bread leading into Eucharist.  On the 16th Sunday we had John telling us of the feeding of the crowd with the small boy’s ‘five barley loaves and the two fish’ & we are reminded of God’s super- abundance by the amount of left-overs, 12 hampers, after all had been fed.  NB. Jesus asks the disciples to pick it all up as ‘it must not be wasted’. This story is pre-figured almost to the letter in the extract on the same Sunday from the second book of Kings even to the mention of left-overs!

A week later in the Gospel reading we have ‘it is my Father who gives you the bread from heaven’ and ‘ I am the bread of life – whoever comes to me will never be hungry’.

And a week after that we read of Elijah being ministered to by an angel, being fed & then sent on a long journey where he will meet God on Mount Horeb.  The gospel that week is the ‘I am the Bread of Life’ teaching – ‘I am the Living Bread which has come down from heaven…………….’.

The attachments relate in some way to this focus & we hope they have meaning for you.

The blessing is from In Tune with Heaven ‘May the Mind of Jesus’.

With our love

 

 

And are the Bread and Wine Your Body, Lord?

And are the bread and wine your body, Lord?

blessed & transformed to food which feeds the soul,

so that, substantially, we are one with you

and broken lives, in union, are made whole?

Come Holy Spirit, sanctify this tryst

And enter in to make us one with Christ.

And is the total universe held here

clasped in a web of sacrificial love

whose pulses weave the atom and the sphere

into one tapestry, here & above?

Come Holy Spirit, sanctify this tryst

And enter in to make us one with Christ.

So frail the symbols, yet in them we see –

through fruit of human labour, bread and wine –

in Christ’s own being, ours in mystery,

bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh entwine:

Come Holy Spirit, sanctify this tryst

And enter in to make us one with Christ.

Thus we need live no longer to ourselves:

indwelling grace gives power beyond our own;

gifts are unleashed to change the universe

that it attain its end through you alone:

Come Holy Spirit, sanctify this tryst

And enter in to make us one with Christ.

 

 

 

 

“A CALL TO COMMITMENT”

by Elsa Tamez

Come!  Let us celebrate the supper of our Lord,

Let us all together bake a giant loaf

And together prepare the jars of wine as at the wedding feast in Cana.

Let the daughters not forget the salt

Nor the sons the leaven.

And let us invite many guests:

The lame, the blind, the deaf, 

The poor.

 Quickly now!

Let us follow the recipe of our Lord,

Let us together knead the dough with our hands

And watch with joy

The rising Bread.

Because today we are celebrating 

our commitment to Christ Jesus.

Today we are renewing our commitment

To the kingdom,

And no one shall go hungry away. Amen

 

 

 

 

Leave This Chanting

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads!
Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut?
Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground
and where the pathmaker is breaking stones.
He is with them in sun and in shower,
and his garment is covered with dust.
Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Deliverance?
Where is this deliverance to be found?
Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation;
he is bound with us all for ever.

Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense!
What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained?
Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.

Rabindranath Tagore.  The Hidden God