weep and cry

what else are we to do

but weep and cry

wail and flail

far and wide

o'er the badgered grounds

of people crying

for some respite to arrive

freeing from the chaos of hell

for we are self-enclosed

denizens of total choice

goddesses and gods

with little to lose

shouting and laughing

at crowds on the loose

searching for enemies

imagined and stewed

ah! if we'd stop and stare

into a mirror with light

we'd uncover ourselves

'neath our pimples and glue

'pon our un-powdered face

with snaggly teeth

awaiting the truth

we'll unbind our feet

freeing us to move

and weep with live tears

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -By washing his disciples feet, (Jesus) overturns natural hierarchies, cutting the history of the world in two.

  -"All of the world since Adam," St. Augustine writes, "is the life of a single individual spread out in thousands of pieces over the earth."   Hence, here is neither male nor female, slave nor citizen, black nor white...My kingdom is not of this world.  My kingdom is not a spectacle; your roles are part of the script.

  -Before acting politically, faith acts poetically.  It creates a new way of seeing, it sings the Magnificat - that is,  it overturns the powerful, lifts up the lowly, not because it needs to but out of a sudden realization.  It sees strength in weakness, glory in the things that are ridiculed.  The enormous absurdity of the cross shatters what the world calls reality.  Truth is disarmed; it is a child in a manger, it arrives riding on a donkey, it hangs on a cross, returns from the night of death, and fades away after offering itself in the humility of bread and wine.  This was the poem that was reality for the disciples, a mere fable for others.  Who would not wish to take death upon herself, consume it, thereby existing in the joyous present, neither looking back nor ahead?

  -It's not bread and wine as such that are important but the basic food which sustains human life.  It could just as well be rice or millet, corn, fermented honey, palm wine.  It's through the nourishment of men and women that the universal body is created.  The pulp of the invisible is in the tangible.

  -We have scarcely begun to realize that simply out of fidelity, in order to become what it is, the Eucharist should be expressed in visible signs that would speak authentically within African, Indian, and Asian cultures.  This truth is repressed because it's painful to have to take a new look at the map of the world.