Personal Narrative: The Spread Of Life

As I read through the readings we have heard this morning, particularly our gospel, two memories from my childhood came to my mind. On the surface they seem to have little to do with what we have read, but bear with me, I hope to make them make sense. The first memory was of my mother, or more particularly my mother’s habit of beginning to watch a movie when it was half way through. I’m not sure if you’ve had a similar experience as that, where people join into the storyline after most of the character development and plot construction has taken place – leaving them with no clue what is going on, but for some reason an insatiable need to make sense of it. “Is he the good guy?”, “Oh, why did they do that?”, “Well this makes no sense at all?”. These were the sounds of my childhood movie watching experience. The second memory was of a series of books I still do not completely understand and slightly wonder if witchcraft is involved, the series known as the Magic Eye books. In these books you would open …show more content…
Having been shaped by experiences and life to this point, the crowds hear the words 'bread of life ' and jump straight to a very physical understanding of Jesus ' words. They remember the hard work it is to simply have basic sustenance on the table and think back to the working of this Jesus who managed to feed five thousand with five loaves and two fish. They see a very miraculous gift horse. They also see a means of achieving the ends they desire, which for the generally poor occupants of the Galilean region was understandably little more than bread on the table, and water in their cup. The vision they had of the good life, of what it meant to live fully, was one in which hunger and thirst no longer dominated their