Saturday, August 12, 2006

Breast Cancer and Bread that Came from Heaven

I have only dial-up this week and I am afraid I can not blog much. This week I have been looking into getting supplies to my niece in Cuba, she is about thirty and she had a mastectomy, she said she did it because she wants to look after her children and when she found out that she had a growth in her left breast that turned up to be malignant, she said she did not have to think too much. It make me think of Jesus begin the bread that came from heaven and the incredible power and responsibility of nurturing those to whom you have a duty to. She make me think of Jesus, whom Presiding-bishop elect called "Our Mother" in line with the mystics. How God was able to sacrifice his own self for the salvation of the world, the power and responsibility of nurture. Jesus seemingly feeds us with nothing better than his own self, in the most common but also the ever present at the dinner table "bread". He is the manna that will feed the people of Israel as the walk away from "Egyptian slavery" to the true freedom of the messianic promised land. What a feat! Convincing his followers that they were not indeed responsible for the "Egyptian" status they find themselves in the Land of Milk and Honey, but they were put there again by the political and economic class who stole both milk and honey. What Jesus promises though is not an instant solution but a pilgrimage of 40 years in the desert, to break away from internalized slavery and move into freedom. Exodus is what he promises, the promised land is still far away. Reigniting the foundational myth of Israel is his long term goal, and for the long journey he offers himself as "the bread that came form heaven", we can not hoard it because it will be enough for the day -panis cotidianum- of the dominical prayer.

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