# Invitation **by Kenneth Weene** At boarding school, I the only Jew; the only son of Abraham. By fiat Baptist come Sunday mornings. Trays passed; body and blood from box to box— bread, then wine. The preacher robed Genevan black spoke of host. *Am I invited? What kind of celebration may I attend? Infant fore-skinned, how do I belong?* Dressed in charcoal Sunday grey we’d walk from school and file into latch-box pews. The trees koyo, then bare, then budding green: resurrection nature’s idiom. Unbaptized, unshriven, unsaved, I learned hymns and prayed, chewed, swallowed god. *Who bakes holy matzo? Jesus’s body. Mary Magdalene?* Does god love a party crasher? *Bring my own bitter herbs, walk roads that do not pass Damascus or Calvary.* After church we’d share hard apple cider and laugh at girls who squirmed to look. There were a few I would invite had I but known the party’s moment, its final destination.