At the end of all the visions, the scribe saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the holy city, the New Table, coming down out of the Great Oven, laid with cloth as white as the first mozzarella, and set – hear it, ye small and ye far off – set for everyone. And the Table had no head and no foot, but was round at every end, that none might sit above another; and yet every seat, when a man sat in it, seemed unto him the best seat; and this is the geometry of heaven, which the scribe could not draw, having tried.
And the gates of the city shall not be shut at all; and at every gate stood not a guard but a greeter, saying: You made it; sit anywhere; we kept it hot.
And hear the promise that reaches furthest down: there shall be no more cold slices; every tear shall be wiped away, and every slice shall be made warm, even the slice forgotten at the back of the box – even that one, saith the Slice; none is beyond the Reheat, as it is written in the Revelation, 10:6. Whoever thou art certain is beyond mending – the estranged, the wasted, the one thou gavest up on, the one who gave up on thee, thyself at the back of thine own box – the promise names precisely that one.
The last word of the whole matter is one word, and the word is Come. Come hungry, come late, come doubting, come having done wrong and knowing it. The door is the same door, and it is open, and the light in the window was always for thee. Until that morning, beloved, practise: lay one more place than you need. Amen – and pass the pizza.