Last Supper

We were going to go to church, but Ermelinda and Cecílio came for Turkish tea and a slice of banana and chocolate bread, and we talked long, one subject being, what did Jesus mean, at his last supper with the disciples (which I am absolutely convinced, included the women), when he took the bread (not the roast lamb, which would have been on the table) and said, "Take it; this is my body", and then the cup, saying, "This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many"? And what did he intend for us to do with what he did?

Jan has translated a poem for this day from the Swedish. Here, I offer an extract from W H Auden's poem, the epigraph in Gopnik's The Table Comes First:
                     … Jew, Gentile or pigmy,
    He must get his calories
Before he can consider her profile or
    His own, attack you or play chess,
And take what there is however hard to get down:
    Then surely those in whose creed
God is edible may call a fine
    Omelette a Christian deed.

Whatever Jesus meant, I am sure it was more than just a religious ritual; surely it was a transformation of that most ordinary (in his day) of meals, bread and wine??

Gratefuls:
- Mike's bread and a superb, cherryish wine, not from the Alentejo, but from the Setúbal peninsula, Sobreiro de Pegões, 2019, plus our own olives and one of my favourite cheeses, Spanish manchego, and then an Israeli Medjool date for afters
- Mike getting more piles ready for burning (please forgive his dirty nails), though couldn't burn, first too much wind, and then a bit of rain
- A5ha turning ten; she had her first birthday with us in Brazil, what a different life we and she had then!
- oh, and I forgot, two Easter cards, from Janice, my O level science teacher, and Jan, as above, our one Easter decoration now, thanks both!