Fasting from eternity and waiting for the sun to set

The sun is still high in the sky. I want so badly for it to set. Please, please, please set so I can feast! The feelings of hunger invade my concentration and make the sight or smell of food a passionately ambivalent swirling of longing and hatred for the pain of lack. I smell more with each moment of fasting. The feasting around me becomes vibrant and holds my gave so covetously that I cannot avert my eyes as I voyeurously look on, participating in my heart.

When will the sun set? Five o-clock maybe? What will the sunset look like? Will it be brilliant and marked? Will it be subdued? Will it be purple, orange, yellow, or vibrant red? Will there be clouds or simply color smeared across a blank canvas sky?

I am curious, expectant, and longing.

Is this moment bad? Is there no good to be had simply because the feast is not here yet? Did I not passionately enjoy the juice I just drank? Did I not revel in it? No. no. Still, something better and bigger comes and the sunset and I will not be satiated as long as the sun remains in the sky.

Hmmm… are these eschatological feelings? Am I this hungry for the true feast? Does the hint of eternity sensuously and seducingly come to my nose and captivate my senses so that I cannot shake the thought of the feast to come? Can I look at the sun and revel in a beautiful day while longing for brilliant sunset and the feast that ensues? Do I see microcosms and tastes of eternity and find myself raptured in them? Do I feel hunger – see starving children (29,000/day), AIDS orphans, Bush/Cheney administration etc. – do I see the painful things and turn my eyes to the sun, waiting for it to set? Waiting for the eschatological end of hunger? And do I look for juice – for some nourishment to ease, though not quench the hunger residing in the now in wait of eternity?

How happily and unthoughtfully I fast from that which I was created for – and yet, how difficult it is for me to give up the material pinings of an only partially redeemed reality.