Our daily bread

Bread buttered with tears you see

bread that curves our hungry lips

bread that fills the bellies of our lives;

bread that smells of war and pain

the fractures of rape, the tortured minds

neglected love, abandoned friends;

bread torn apart by folks we know

fam'lies that pound us into dough

bending wills, reshaping souls;

bread, Your bread, spit before the poor

avoided in clubs and on city streets

blamed and cursed for being too near.

This is the bread that is daily

that bread upon which we prey

the bread You offer us pray upon

with tears and shame, re-membering

to shape us whole as nurturing bread.

This is the bread we're given to eat

bread to be given, given as feast.

When our teeth grind the host

blood unveils the whisp'rings of our lips;

your Christ leaks through what we intend forget

each drop of Him falling 'pon the weak of us;

and when your priest holds aloft the sacred host

it's us You see clown acting our own charade

our false and tainted scripts revealed.

Skilled Molder of the Human Clown

knead the dough of us anew

that we might feast without our guilt

bearing the shame that truly frees;

and You weeping with crucified love

with tears to wash our crusty hearts

press forgiveness into our filthy hands

the bread You unstintingly give.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Victims bear no responsibility.  They live in a world where blame and fault can be laid elsewhere.

  -For those who profess and call themselves Christians, the lens through which everything is interpreted is a person: Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection.

  -We cannot do without a paradigm to help us live.

-Human beings need a ritual, an icon, a holy place that will lift them our of the terrifying grip of a deadly everydayness.

  -"Choose and be chosen" is a law of the psychological and spiritual life.  No one can avoid choosing or being chosen by a "paradigm."  It is where we locate our sense of identity, where we find ourselves, our place.  Human beings have found their identity in such diverse models and paradigms as celibacy, sex, war, reason, equality, buffaloes, snakes, tea, peyote, alcohol, tranquility, money, ecology, psychoanalysis, Mao, and Christ.  Choosing, therefore, is very important, because who we are and where we stand will depend on our choice.