Probiotic Grace Before Meals

By John Ballard

Before he got famous for his superior journalism revealing The Family at C Street, Jeff Sharlet, together with Peter Manseau, founded Killing The Buddha, another of my favorite reads. That was the source of this offering which is appropriate for Thanksgiving, especially for anyone of a scientific bent.
I lost the original link but I'm sure it's out there somewhere if anyone wants to look.
The Shakespeare snip makes an appropriate preface.

"Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?" the King asked.

"At supper."

"At supper? Where?"

"Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A banqueting party of shrewd worms are dining with him as we speak. The worm has a regal appetite. We fatten the animals to fatten ourselves and we fatten maggots. Your fat king and your skinny beggar seem like two very different dishes, but they end up on the same table. That's the end."

Hamlet, Act Four, Scene 3

BLESS ME, OH LORD, and these your gifts, your emissaries: bacillus, yeast, and virus, protozoa and metazoa � all who receive me as their gift. I thank you for this, our Holy Commensalism.

Blessed art thou, oh Mothers and Fathers among you, both ecto and endo. I thank you for your hungers and for this beautiful day. Thank you for not leaving me to waste and to rot, for paring away the dead and excessive, for cleansing away the discarded and decayed, for working amongst yourselves toward the kingdom of my immunity. Thank you for your hungers, for your impeccable work. That which does not destroy me, indeed makes me endure. Take of this, my body, feast and be sheltered.

Thank you oh my many phagocytes, my hungry warriors of the blood, keen-nosed Neutrophlis, mighty Eosinohil, and the sturdy T-cell. Thank you for your vigilance, your unflagging courage, for keeping our enemies at bay.

Thank you, oh legion of predacious microbes both aerobic and anaerobic, for sharing your feast with me, for living in balance within and upon me, never being greedy. As you will someday convert me to the soil, as you will someday ferry my cells across the dark waters, I celebrate each day of our mutual existence, and thank you for another day without constipation.

Entero, Staphylo, and Strepto.
Oh my Coccuses, I celebrate you!
Bacillus and bacterium all: Lacto, Bifido, Propion, Cornye, and Fus, I celebrate you!
Citro & Enterobacter, Shigella, Klebsiella, Neisseria, I celebrate you!
Hemophilus, Proteus, Treponema and the mighty Diptheroids, I praise you!
Clostridium, Pityrosporum, Pseudomonas and Trichomonas, I praise you!
Ever ubiquitous Candida, and the esteemed E-coli, thank you time and again for your blessings. I celebrate you!

Thank you, tooth amoebae, that my gums are scrubbed by your cytoplasm.
Thank you, Demodex Folliculorum, that my eyelashes are groomed by your mandibles.
And lastly, oh abundant dust mite, thank you that my excess dander is raked by your forelegs, consumed by the diligence of your prodigious appetite.

Givers of life, thank you for choosing me to be the fruit of much hard work. We each hunger to live another second, to eat and to become food. May I join you someday to feast at another table. Until then, in the name of the compassionate and beneficent and omnivorous God, I offer my flesh with love and gratitude.

Amen

In case you missed it, Sharlet was Terry Gross' guest on Fresh Air this week.
Very timely in light of the most recent tawdry tales of Faith and Hubris Gone Wild. I refer, of course, to the latest wrinkle in the Ensign Saga.
Nice timing, Mr. Sharlet. Just in time for holiday sales.