blood and bread and water

I.

I pick up a red, cinnamon scented lava lamp pen and draw a blood crayon during my meeting. 

I start with the middle box of the crayon, adding all the crayola branding, squiggles at both ends and the oval in the middle. I add the tail end of the crayon and shape the triangular tapered wax point. As I fill in the colored parts of the crayon, the scent of cinnamon ink rises viscerally from the small sketchpad. 

Last, I turn to the oval in the middle, and write blood in slanted letters to resemble the iconic font Futura as best I can. 

"Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.”

II.

“Why is the bible so bloody?” I ask Mariah at Coffea Louise. Why so ritualistic, why slaughtering the animals, why atonement, why so dark? She blinks as she digests my question, like she often does. Then points out that it’s no darker than the grilled chicken I ate last night, I’m just removed from the blood, the killing of it all. 

I’ve had a bug about blood since I read John 6 back in October. 

Hunger, thirst, bread, blood, water, wanting, desire. Jesus said “I am thirsty” on the cross. Yet in John chapter 4 he tells the woman at the well, “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 

So why is he thirsty now? Why isn’t his own spiritual water enough? Why does he desire something else other than union with God? 

Jesus is highly symbolic, ritualistic, mysterious. It’s how our conversations are shaped, because I do take after my father. It doesn’t agree with everyone. For the folks who want it cut and dry, neat and organized. But Jesus is incredibly odd. Like the weird kid in class that no one understands. Why is he always doing everything backwards? Why is he speaking through things that seem to directly contradict where you think he would be? Why is he always overturning doctrines you knew to be true, things you’d heard in church all your life, and reassigning them different meaning?

Phrases like, selfish desire. Sinful desire. Desperately wicked. Arrows embedded in the tender heart of wanting, and I, the soldier who plucked them out. I cast aside the shafts but I keep the metal arrowheads. I fashion them into a breastplate. Surprisingly malleable yet rigid like cast iron, they form a shell over me. I will not want. No, even better, I will want God alone. The logical conclusion: If I want anything that isn’t God, I am horribly selfish. 

And so the church quietly shuffled me arrowhead after arrowhead. I was building something valuable, after all. 

That is, until the blood crayon.

Hunger, thirst, bleeding that breaks the mold. That is un-ignorable. That’s been shoved into my armor since I was a little girl and patted on the shoulder to the tune of not wanting. It is my own version of the gospel in which “good news” means a life of devotion by my own sacrifices. But 13 year old me didn’t have the luxury of knowing that the people who told her that her dreams had to die to please God were…wrong.

When Jesus saw people in need, he didn’t tell them “I think you want that too much.” 

He’s the weird kid in my 6th period art class. I tell him all about how someone told me I needed to have more discipline over my desires. I ask him how to do that, how to make that happen. He doesn’t say anything, he just turns on the radio and hands me the blood crayon. 

The sunlight filters through the slats in the blinds as the music mingles with the dust particles in the air. I listen to the lyrics of Chloe Moriondo’s Manta Rays for the first time.

I wanna be your shining pearl

Your one in the world

The type you wanna lean on

Wish I were something suited for that

I skip every song that won't remind me of you 'cause if it doesn't

It's not worth the time, I wish I had more time with you

Oh, I knew it was about us. The chorus makes me cry. 

But it's all for you

It's all for you

It's all for you

It's always for you

It's all for you

It's never not for you

It's all for you

It's still all for you

What about discipline? I ask. You know, over my desires? How do I get more?

But Jesus is occupied with drawing in the dirt with his finger. Exonerating me. Telling off those who would cast a stone. Relieving me from the accusations of those who did not see me as blameless before him. Those who did not actually see me at all. Trying to wash my feet, maybe. I am having a hard time letting him. Taking off that breastplate. I will be good! I will do it right. I will take a knife to everything I ever wanted. 

I turn to look at the crayon he handed me. 

I want you to have less discipline. Less rigidity. Less control. Less armor. Yes, less discipline. 

I laugh. Why are you so weird? Why are you always telling me the opposite of what I think you are going to say? Don’t you want me to want less?

It doesn’t make sense to me yet. I am slowly reversing the process of ducking for cover when people talk about the evils of desire. The vows I made to protect myself by not wanting. The way they formed a cage around me. The way coming out of that cage was sore and painful and ravenous. The temptation I have to call any form of desire an idol, shackle it up indefinitely, and move on with my life. 

But I continue to hunger and I can’t get it to go away by spiritualizing it, by an internal shift, by reworking my priorities. By making sure I am holy enough. Making sure I am content enough. Apologizing for wanting, for deviating from God being enough. Letting my lack be too loud, I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry. Forgive me for wanting. 

III. 

The blood crayon stares at me. 

Blood is life force, like desire. A driver of human behavior. Hunger and thirst are simple forms of desire. Hunger and thirst are not anti-gospel. Wanting to eat is not sinful. And not wanting is not my savior. 

I gasp. Do I blaspheme to call my wanting precious instead of sinful? Desire being human and normal instead of something to annihilate is revelation enough.

Like blood in my body, like hunger in my mouth, like the thirst of Jesus on the cross, wanting is irreconcilably human. 

He looks at me carefully, knowing it will hurt and relieve at the same time. 

Wanting is deeply good. I want you to want.