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!