Feasts of Many Colors

The Shape of Living is the title of a book by British theologian David Ford. Its subtitle Spiritual Direction for Everyday Life intrigued me even more. It is indeed as the Foreward indicates: “a feast with many courses, each delighting and challenging us in their different ways.” 

A feast with many courses....I doubt many of us in this pandemic are thinking much about feasts, at least not as they have been socially constructed as elaborate and often wasteful not to mention exclusionary moments. We tend to think of them as gatherings of important people to celebrate a human milestone. Yet, I wonder whether in this time when language itself is being reconstructed, vocabularies expanded and contracted, and words taking on new meanings or recovered ones, we might not open up some of our secular exaggerations and hegemonies and return to such words as feast and look at them in a theological light. 

When I do this I remember the feast of all feasts which many of us are grieving, the Eucharist. And then I am consoled by the continuation of spiritual communion which as the prayer proclaims reaches to and through all physical boundaries to nurture us with love and mercy. Thanksgiving and nurture continue.

I also rotate the word feast in my heart and conjure up memories of banquets of delights by which I was surprised. These tend to happen on any given day when we may be least expecting them, yet we are somehow open to the Spirit’s table setting. 

In the Gospels Jesus reminds us in countless ways that He came that we might have life abundantly. He points to a “feast” or mansion or room which is being prepared for us. A mansion with many rooms, a feast with many courses, these are the metaphors of eternal life and abundance which we too often collapse into the instruments of our greed. 

In this pandemic when our senses have also been retuned and refined we are experiencing a feast of losses and a banquet of delights. We find ourselves on any given day staring into bleak desolation as well as turning to our gardens and our wildlife, our landscapes and our new altars and being knocked backward by the magnificent color and beauty. These are the feasts of many courses which God is offering to us. Come unto me all ye who travail and I will give you feasts of many colors.