Riffin’ On Manifold Resonance in Bread-making

Jesus’ Teaching on Prayer

11 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

2 He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“‘Father,[a]

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come.[b]

3 

Give us each day our daily bread.

4 

Forgive us our sins,

    for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.[c]

And lead us not into temptation.[d]’”

5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[e] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for[f] a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

…

Notice the manifold resonance, established first in the Lord’s prayer, but implied as well in the idea of the “friend” spurned somewhat by “shameless audacity”, spurned effectively/righteously…so as to establish a pattern for sensible future behavior…we can find a grounding truth in our example as man, man who is compelled naturally, in time, to forgive the trespasses we commit against one another, regarding how God will be, already is, actually…with us.

As our “fathers” are with their “sons”, despite their continued capacity for ignorance/“evil”, we can expect God to be with us (why wouldddd He even create the capacity for suffering?! ; ;). I wouldn’t necessarily say even more perfectly so… clearly God has no capacity for ignorance, but the example we do set interpersonally as humans is it. That’s it. There’s no surpassing it…it is the sublime joy of being a parent.

It’s how the institution of parenthood can miraculously nurture and sustain as it does. It’s God’s perfect love, manifest. It’s also just normal social love (it’s extraordinary and exhausting). Society is already effectively oriented towards truth…we’re already doing this, we did it before there was a Bible, and we do it whether or not we practice religion- practicing, like in sports or instruments, is about…what usually amounts to a recreation which sharpens us. You will seek that in life somewhere … whether it’s Pokemon Red or devotional philosophy or writing a really deep rock opera that you then perform locally…

I adore that Jesus claims that it is not out of friendship, as your abrupt presence after hours truly is, at some level, a social faux pas, even if the origins of it are a traveller arriving late, a permissible situation given the nomad’s limited awareness of the specific customs he’s encroaching upon in his intended destination…this is one of those ‘it’s innocent but it’s also not right’ sorts of scenarios, in all of its beauty, that your friend is willing to accommodate your demands not because of the friendship, but instead because of your “shameless audacity”. While not customary, not advisable at all as a pattern of behavior, this is the first shot/hail Mary…it is fierce grace, this “shameless audacity”, utterly righteous if not to be repeated…it conventionally brings about the vision of the normative and methodical path to Communion with Source, figuratively.

It creates a framework by which the friend can return in the future under appropriate terms and receive bread under the auspices of genuine mutuality/friendship. Just as we forgive one another…just as God helps to provide our daily bread… a framework encouraging robust community.   

A topic for the times…popular in any time actually! A good crux of the labors of life are about making bread…literally, so as to be able to sustain ourselves nutritionally/financially. Cosmically the idea of somehow creating something is a bit silly…all you ever do is really transform the elements that are already on hand…in some form your creation already exists as a potentiality in dialogue with the ingredients. But how does one seemingly collapse a potentiality out of…non-existence/nothing? In the abstracts it truly can’t be understood (which is why God is often regarded as a “holy mystery” socially…this aspect of existence is implied by the existence of things but can’t be comprehended or observed). As a method for attempting as much, you can simply allude back to the manifold resonance which itself is alluded to in the Lord’s prayer, gifted beautifully in today’s passage.

You could go so far as to simply say the Lord’s prayer. It begins by evoking God’s acute presence by saying “Lord”. It singularly says it all. It implies the next phrase, “Hallowed be thy name”. Notice, the next phrase in this version is “give us this day our daily bread”, but this too was already evoked in the beginning with the single-worded phrase “Lord”…the utterance implies existence as it is. The two are the same.

Much like the daily bread we receive is simply, mysteriously, just a parcel of the Infinite. Oh that very Lord. Experience is our daily bread as much as everything nutritional is. Experience is nutritional. The meat and potatoes of it, as framed here, is interpersonal grace…a robust spirit of forgiveness and productive mutuality amongst men as they work together to succeed  socially..which entails testifying to the truth of God.

Also too observable, if not directly commented upon in the teaching, is the notion that what people desire is inherently right at some level. In gift giving its a best practice to typically give what the recipient would care to receive. But all desires…while not to be explained away, are at some level subordinate to a desire to commune effectively with Source in live time. That’s why we desire, unconsciously…it sets off a series of events that allows the conscious to glimpse God directly…it also sustains us as many of our desires are nutritional…and these nutrients ultimately are just…the very light/body of the Infinite…it’s about orientation…amongst many other things…our random experiences of being physical are about manifesting personal meaning but at all moments, whether we feel significant or blissful or sleepy or stoned or sick, we are tending effectively to the entirety of life in the cosmos…by being.

This stuff is relevant, but admittedly its stiff and hard to percolate down, and my normal tone as a blog project, which itself arose from the Gita as that was the central text I was working with, is subdued here.. I am far more memey than this, usually, but needed to work with the Gospel to appease certain crowds/breathe life into particular causation chains…next I’ll pivot to a short passage from the Bhagavad Gita just to convey how it’s a mutual wisdom but that it’s mysteriously aligned with the sensibility of the young/hip of the day to the tune of them inherently seeming to be better with it, at first, than the Bible.

I myself couldn’t make sense of what the Bible was, like, even, like, trying to literally convey, let alone its deeper moral relevance, until after blogging on the Gita, and I went to Catholic school through 8th grade… there are secret gatekeepers or perhaps Gypsy curses, I don’t know, but I didn’t make it with them…but fortunately a weirdo at a music festival gifted me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and blogging on it as an adult out of boredom grew mysteriously fun/profound… such is what happens when you force a quarantine…

I found this meme online and it’s awesome.