on communion

This is how I want to take communion. I want to hold a loaf fresh from the oven, the dough kneaded by the rough hands of a friend, warmth rising, infused with its sweet scent. I want to take this bread in my hands and break it open with my fingers, releasing its aroma. I want it to leave my hands and fill the hands of the one next to me. I want to take my communion in chunks. I want to indulge in it. I want to fill my mouth with it and I want it to satiate me. I want to hold in my left hand this meal and, after the moment of its recognition, I want to keep dipping it into olive oil and a little salt – raising it to my lips again and again. In my right hand, I want to hold a glass of red wine. I’ll sip it and swirl it and savor it – drawing out the rich breadth of it before swallowing. I want it to be filled to overflowing. I want it, as it fills my mouth with its flavor to remind me that this is everlasting. That it is good.

This is how I want to take communion. In homes and before fires, on beaches before waves, on mountains before open skies, in fields before sunsets. Around tables and around friends. In crowded rooms filled with laughter and in quiet corners filled with tears. And even in churches.

This is how I want to take communion. With loaves of bread that fill me, not wafer thin crackers that remind me I am empty. With glasses of remembrance, not sips of observance. I want it to be abundant, not scarce. I want it to fill my being, not dissolve on my tongue before I can even taste its goodness. I want it to satisfy my thirst, not wet my tongue leaving me desiring more. I want it to be sacramental, not sentimental. I want it in sacred spaces and profane, but not in abstracted places. I want it to be intimate and accessible, not isolated and exclusionary.

This is how I want it to be when I remember. This is how I want it to be when I sit with that sacrifice. This is how I want to know those words. This conspiring; this breathing-together. This community; this gift-together. This communion; this sharing-together. This covenant; this coming-together. I want it to merge beautifully with my everyday, not stand apart from my lived-experience. I want it to fuse my laughter and my crying, my sacred and profane and profound, my before and my after.

This is how I want to take communion.

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