Wednesday, February 04, 2009




I really love taking Communion...

I mean, I love it! I always have. As early as I can remember, every time the Communion plate went around, I would want to take a handful. When the wine/grape juice made it's way around, I swear if I could I would guzzle at least a dozen little goblets or drink every licking drop from the chalice (thereby leaving the priest none). What is wrong with me? Why do I have this uncanny urge to partake in full of The Lord's table? Is it that I am hungry and am in need of a little bit of carbs? I really don't thinks so. Because, in that moment all I really want is Communion: pizza hut will not suffice. So there is something about it that I LOVE.

And, I think it has little to do with it's intended purpose, i.e. remembering the death of Christ and how "he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed". Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the thought that Jesus died and took my everything upon himself that I might have life. But I don't think this is where my mind is when I'm wanting to gobble down The Lord's Supper. I think my mind (or soul rather) is so open to the magic of the moment: this ritual has been repeated millions of times throughout centuries. Centuries. I imagine earlier followers of Christ living in Macedonia partaking whilst remembering the Mystical. I envision Greek soldiers partaking of it in secret trying to touch the Fantastic. I see mothers and children in hovels down through the ages dipping their bread in their wine and remembering Jesus and the profundity of his journey...hoping they have a place in the scope of this journey. I imagine drug addicts high as a kite standing in the back of a church taking it; trusting that they will be OK and be better than the night before. I see losers and saints, sinners and aristocrats taking this bread...drinking this wine; longing for a real God to show up some way in their lives and assure them that their unspoken brokenness is seen and possibly understood. I see a lonely woman home in her house simulating this event with her own foccacia bread and cheap bottle of Boone's Farm wine; hoping that her life has meaning...wanting a glimpse of God in her world.

I see them as far back as two thousand years ago to the present. All kinds. All types. All pains. All human conditions...at all places on the continuum of faith trying to touch heaven...trying to be touched by heaven. And, when I see them trying to touch the untouchable, the miraculous, the never ending, the unfathomable...I get touched so deeply and truly, that I want to partake forever. In that moment I stand with my brethren of humanity trying to tackle our hard to reconcile desire to know God and glance into His heart (hoping to see ourselves in there)...trusting that we are seen. Though the masses are great and the world seems to implode with souls from start to eternity...I feel special when I take Communion. I feel that I am being seen by God and, maybe...by all the other broken souls that stood before me trying for the same thing...to touch the untouchable...

In that moment I feel transfixed between a deep desire to be touched in my broken parts and assured that unlike Humpty Dupmty I can be put together again. In that moment I feel a release; like heaven is pausing and bending down towards me and holding my cheek. It feels so sacred that I just want to keep it coming. I swear I could take it every Sunday, or everyday for that matter, if I could. Well I guess if I wanted to I could take it everyday in my house. Maybe I will...

I told you I LOVE taking communion (and for probably all the wrong reasons)...but I still do!

Sunday, February 01, 2009










There exist a gap between what I always wanted to be and what I am...


I sit here at 34 trying to reconcile the gap: trying to decide whether to close it or let it persist. You know how you have unlimited possibilities in front of you when you are young? You really think that every and anything is possible...then life happens a little more than it did the year before and you are not the person you always dreamed of being and it seems as if you never will be. The only problem with this is, I cannot seem to let go. Life happens and I get down on my knees, a little more buckled in my back than the day before. Yet, I still can't let go. I still can't reconcile myself to the possibility that I will never see the things I once dreamed in my youth (oh, I know I am still young in the grand scheme of things...but I am further from the young me that dreamed dreams that got up and danced before me and allowed me to touch them with my wobbly hands and a goofy grin). Life tells me to close the gap and accept what is: that some things will NEVER be. And, I really want to do this at times: it seems more prudent and wise. For what will I look like as an old lady with old dreams in my pockets and possibilities in my shoes? Will I look like a pathetic mess? Now as I write, that old lady doesn't look as pathetic as when I conjured her up in my thoughts. Actually she looks quite magical. But I digress, getting back to closing this gap.

So there I go wondering again how I will look to the masses. Wondering how I will look believing for something that may never be...How did Kurt Warner look to the masses stocking shelves at a grocery store with dreams of super bowls in his heart? Stupid? Maybe. Even crazy and a bit wishful? But I think the more important question is, "how did he FEEL dreaming those dreams while stocking those shelves?" He probably felt full in his heart: that dream probably kept him getting up every morning to do the mundane and dream killing task of stocking a shelf. There is something about a dream that feeds the soul. Whether the outcome is what I expect...the dream is nourishment to my deepest self...

So the gap question: what do I do with this gap between the me I dreamt and the me I am? Do I close the gap and fold it upon itself so that the matter of it's existence disappears into this elegant universe? Or, do I let it persist, knowing that in the dreaming I am fed? You see dreams keep me alive. They make me feel utterly beautiful and full of purpose. I know no other way to live. I think I have my answer: for me it's better to let the gap persist than to give up and resign myself to only "what is". Because that would be a place where possibility would cease to exist. And, if possibility did not exist, then what am I here for? What am I waking up day after day for? I certainly am not waking up for only, "what is". For "what is" was not yesterday...even "what is" existed in the realm of possibility the day before. So it seems to me that possibility is the fabric of our days and nights: It is just as real as atoms, the building blocks of our universe. Maybe it is what atoms are made of...POSSIBILITY.

Yes, the gap persists and lives on. And, I think that I am more comfortable in the gap, in this minute than I was before I penned this. Thanks to this moment I will boldly live in the gap! Viva la gap!!