a kingdom built of seeds

You invite me to your table but “I’m not hungry I’m not thirsty” I tell you. I have had everything here before. I am no longer hungry or thirsty for what I have long had my fill of.

“But there is still room for you” I hear and I know it is true. But is it true? That I may come to you where you have come to me without partaking of the food or drink I can just be with you the tired weary traveler I am because the sustenance is irrelevant if I am sitting next to you pouring out my heart telling you why I have lost my hunger and thirst for what has been given me since childhood. (I can be force fed no longer.)

At your table I will not eat not drink at least not right now because I have not the stomach for it. But it is where you are so I will keep coming back all the same even if I rise from the table with more hunger and thirst than before I just cannot have any more.

I come for the conversation the speaking the listening my spirit grows thin and gaunt but my heart is fed by your presence even without words of assurance and I may still be lost and wandering but not here. Not here with you.

“There is room for you” also though you may not eat or drink the same as the others though seated at the same table as they. It is not their prerogative to have you fill yourself with the same spiritual sustenance with which they fill themselves. The food and drink that is sweet and filling to one may be only bitter and unsatisfying to another. But what we eat or drink at the table (or whether we do at all) is secondary even irrelevant because we are not beholden to what is served but to the one we sit with and by whose invitation we have even come.

“There is room for you. You didn’t have to come. But you did. I care not what or whether you eat or drink, only that you’ve come. Only that you’re here. With me. As I have always been with you—near even in your distance, close even in your hesitation. Leave the rest be if you must—even the bread and the wine—just be here with me, thin and gaunt as you are. There is room for you here, because I am here.”