For A Feast

There once was a benevolent young woman who gladly gave out food to those in need. Time and time again she would take them bread and wine and sit among the hungry men and women watching them enjoy her generosity because of the joy she experienced in their very enjoyment. Often she would sit and eat and drink, feasting and imbibing and joining in the raucous laughter. But never did she eat and drink deeply because of need. You see, she was wealthy and had no lack like those she provided for. She was a person of great wealth.

But as you can imagine in all stories such as this, misfortune came like storm and poverty like Leviathan. She now felt she had nothing to give and indeed had nothing but her knowledge of nothing. She now sought out the very bread and wine she had so liberally given away. It all felt so distant and therefore precious beyond all estimation. What would she not give for the bread to be crushed between her teeth and tumble upon her palette finding purchase in her stomach, satisfying. She would give all the wealth she ever had for the sensation of wine upon her lips again – to draw the blood-red drops of it from the side of the bottle and lick them from her fingers. To hear the laughter she once enjoyed fostered by the bread and wine she provided. For a feast!

Would you believe me if I told you the very sort of people she provided for had come from their hovels and out of their poverty and emptied themselves so she could enjoy the bread and the wine again? She joined them as they ripped at the bread in fierce delight. She raised it along with them high in the air, with thankful praise! And the wine was the best she had ever tasted. It streamed down her throat, ran down her chin and loosened her tongue to sing songs of great joy. She wept as she looked at the crimson liberality so manifest in the glass before her. She lifted it high! She wept tears of joys! For she had just realized that the very thing she had seen as need in others and a reason for joy in others was now the one thing she needed and wanted alone. For a feast.