A wine for every thirst, and bread for hunger:
the fruit of every age of fallen seeds
laid on a table, long and ever longer,
for all our needs.
But who will bake the bread for your great feasting?
No one, O Christ: For all the years we wait,
you labor, working slowly as the yeast does.
It is not late:
It is the slow transforming of creation.
The stones of sorrow grinding this world’s wheat
prepare all things for your great fermentation,
that we may eat.
And so this dust, this something out of the nothing,
becomes the matter of your sacrament
until we find, O Lord, that you fill all things
in covenant.
So all that you have made you lay before us.
The world becomes your bread—which you will break,
which hides yourself, which you have given for us—
and we partake.
Then no one will be left back in the kitchen.
The master sits the servants down to feast
on bread he made himself, when we are lifted
with Christ the yeast.
“Woman’s Home Companion” 1919 advertisement – Buckley, George D. (1919) Woman’s Home Companion, 46, issues 1-8, Crowell & Kirkpatrick Company, pp. 1–, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76103161
Kate Bluett 