Daily Bread

I felt spiritually homeless and I was desperate for some soul food. We were visiting a new church: a tiny Anglican gathering about seven minutes from our house.  A hodgepodge of 100 men, women and children show up on any given Sunday: young families, squirmy toddlers, seminary students, empty nesters. Here, I was learning new rhythms, new ways of worship, new expectations about the Sunday gathering. I felt like I could breath.

I didn’t worry that an underhanded comment about marriage being singularly between a man and a women would provoke cheers from 3,000 people while I followed two women and their two sons out the back door sobbing. I didn’t think anyone would request one on one’s with me about censoring my social media. I felt like I might be able to bring my whole self there. I could not sense any insiders, and thankfully then, no outsiders. But I was new and cautious and still guarding my broken heart.

I can remember feeling the Spirit’s presence in my life for as long as my mind can see back.  And then something that felt like a calling I couldn’t ignore in 2nd grade after we were rescued from Mississippi to live in Houston.  In our church tradition, when you felt this “calling” you literally walked down the church aisle on a Sunday morning, going forward to make what they called a “public profession of faith.”  I didn’t realize then that I was a mystic. I believed I was acknowledging what had always been true: I was God’s child and the Holy Spirit was within me and Jesus was The Way, The Truth and The Light.

I’m wandering around this new church with its makeshift room looking for Light, begging Hope to show up. I can’t go back to the days when Silence held me captive. I cannot close the curtains and block everyone out to keep my rooms safe. I’m begging the Light to come in but sometimes all I can see are cracked windows, fractured people, broken ideals and fragmented outcomes to complex problems.

When I can’t find my way, I try to remember what I tell my children because with them I tend to keep it simple and true. Stella started serving the cup during communion in our new tiny church.  Like me, and like all of us, sometimes she needs help remembering what we are remembering.

“Mom, what do I say again,” Stella leaned over and whispered to me as her time to serve was approaching.

I whispered softly back to her, “The blood of Christ. The cup of salvation.”

Then she whispered it under her breath a few times to keep the sound of it rolling around in her head. The minister began. “Draw near,” he said, and she walked towards him at the table to take the cup. She wrapped her young, precious hands around the heavy chalice and took her place standing on a low stool so her hands could reach up to the faces of grown ups.

She confidently makes eye contact with every person – women, men, children – all are welcome to take from the cup. She looks at their faces and says it again and again and again, “The blood of Christ. The cup of salvation.”  

I can hardly hold myself together simply watching her share the chalice with each passer-by. I am overwhelmed by this image of her, so young and innocent and beautiful and already bearing the chalice.  The chalice has a price and it includes great joy coupled with great suffering. My heart is held together knowing she chooses to hold the cup, say these words, not because she is well studied in the scripture or has enough verses memorized or plans to be in formal ministry, but because she knows she is God’s child. Her worst mistakes are still in front of her, her journey has hardly begun, yet she is holding the cup, holding an invitation to participate in the life of Jesus. She and me and everyone in the room are the thief on the cross, and we humbly and with fractured awareness of our own brokenness, take the bread and cup as to say, “Jesus, remember me.”

I approach her with awe and humility. She says again but now to me, her mother, “The blood of Christ. The cup of salvation.”  In this moment, when I look back into my child’s eyes, when I watch her lean down to offer the cup to her brother, I feel God’s invitation to me again and again. God stands on the stool or steps down and reaches low to offer me the cup. The cup is full of redemption and life and struggle and beauty and mystery and truth which can never be fully known but grappled with over a lifetime of hearing Jesus whisper to me once more, “Truly, I tell you, you will be with me in paradise.”

I want to hold onto this redemption. I want to remember. We sit down by the fire, sip the red blend and let our hearts bleed in front of one another. This communion holds us too, helps us remember: I am broken and healing and becoming and redeemed. My soul is sanctified and my life is unwrapping itself in front of me. I am desperate to see down the road but the Light only shines one step ahead, one moment of grace followed by another and another. Paradise is now and Heaven is here and the Spirit of the age whispers into the darkest corners, “Glory, glory, hallelujah.”

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