December 23, 2002: A Toast

Friends: Forgive my finding comfort in talking to you. I hope a third note in as many days is welcome. If not, erace. As you might guess, I've been doing lots of thinking and pacing and waiting and wondering and wandering and complaining these past few days. Even been doing a bit of praying. This morning as I wrote a note to a friend in Canada and found myself thinking about the joys of this season--the great mysteries bound up in the notion of Emmanuel, God With Us. In this time of turmoil and, to be honest, great fear and questioning, I'm finding immense reassurance in the idea that he came "not to condemn but to save." (even champions of grace need to be reminded that mercy always trumps judgment/karma). And I'm finding comfort, too, in the central metaphor of the Kingdom of God as a "banquet." There's something disarmingly subversive at work in that idea.... A Great Joy comes among us in our suffering and invites us to a banquet. In the midst of everything he says: Celebrate! Live large! Do nothing halfway. Put what is tentative away. Embrace what is lovely!

Another friend wrote this morning to tell me that she was praying for us even as she endured food poisoning--and was filled with wonder at the grace bound up in that image. Is Emmanuel with us there--in the retching and agony? If he's not, then what's the point? I guess that means everyone is invited. And that some days, the banquet comes to us. I was thinking, too, about my friend Kevin's annual festival called "Beggars Banquet"--and how wonderful, kind and fundamentally subversive that notion is too.... We are needy all, and yet loved, absolutely... Then, even as we are calling for seconds and uncorking that great New Wine he brings, he gently tinkles his glass to get our attention and reminds us again of those outside, those without names or family or power or email lists or hope--for "such were some of you"--and then invites them too. Everybody's invited. Then joy,joy, joy, the banquet continues. And so yet another course and yet more wine. The delights that follow a good Zin--from California or from the Kingdom--can't be counted. So here's to a grand Christmas--to much feasting; to a grand banquet, wherever you are.

Despite our challenges, despite the nameless and voiceless and the fatherless, despite blood cells that are producing all the wrong things and despite bones that grow weary and brittle... a Toast (from Robert Farrar Capon's "The Supper of the Lamb"):

To a radically, perpetually unnecessary world;

to the restoration of astonishment to the heart and mystery to the mind;

to wine, because it is a gift we never expected; to mushroom and artichoke, for they are incredible legacies;

to improbable acids and high alcohols, since we would hardly have thought of them ourselves;

and to all being, because it is superfluous:

to the hairs on Harry's ear, and to the seven hundred and sixty-eighth cell from the upper attachment of the right gluteus maximus in the last girl on the chorus line.

Prosit, Dear Hearts.

Cheers, Men and Brethren.

We are free: nothing is needful, everything is for joy.

Let the bookkeepers struggle with their balance sheets; it is the tippler who sees the untipped Hand.

God is eccentric; He has loves, not reasons.

Salute!

And amen too.

I will write a note again--probably this Friday afternoon--when we have more clarity about the diagnosis, prognosis and expected course of action. In the meantime, please pray, please feast, and please remember that everyone is invited.

dwight

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