The Table

I am making this with my hands, out of what was lying about the house: scripture, doubt, untamed stories, and borrowed practices. I claim no lineage. The shape is mine, and so is the responsibility.

The dead are at the table and they will not stop arguing. The Gnostics came early and will not eat; they say the food is a trap. The Buddhists ask, kindly, who exactly is hungry. Jung is drawing on the tablecloth. Crowley has taken the good chair without being offered it. The liberation theologians want to know who cooked. The feminists want to know who was expected to keep cooking while everyone else became profound. The anarchists are rearranging the seats. At the far end, an Irish storyteller lifts a glass: Now, the branch was in flower, and that was the whole trouble.

They disagree about the self, salvation, matter, divinity, authority, and what may lie beyond ordinary perception. I receive questions, stories, disciplines, provocations, and warnings. Sometimes I have an answer.

Each guest is right about something the others need. Each goes wrong by being made the whole. The Gnostic sees the prison and forgets the bread. The Buddhist empties the self and still has to answer the telephone. Jung finds a hidden king in every cupboard. Crowley mistakes a star for a permit. The anarchist can become a never-ending series of meetings in which everything is argued and nothing is done. The feminist can name the hands in the kitchen and still leave them washing up. The storyteller can make danger beautiful enough to enter thrice.

Tyranny begins where a partial power presents itself as the whole. What is true of markets and states is true of traditions and books. The head of the table stays empty by construction.

Which is not the same as comfortable. It is still an empty chair, with somebody’s coat over the back of it, and there are nights I would hand it to anyone who asked.

Traditions are relations, not supplies. A relation can be honored, neglected, betrayed, or repaired. Many of these sources are texts and writers who cannot answer my use of them. Others belong to living communities who can refuse, correct, and set limits. I try to know whose hands a thing came through; I name what I have changed; some names and rites stay outside my use entirely — and I do the dishes.

To speak for a guest is to fill a chair with my account of its occupant and read it out to the room. To speak near one is to say what I received, in my own name, where the person it came from can hear it and object. The dead cannot object, which is why I owe them accuracy. The living can, which is why I owe them the chance.

Then I write down what the meal obliges me to.