| | Last Sunday was World Communion Sunday, and it's always a day when I'm left thinking about all those with whom I'm in communion but with whom I don't have the privelege of actually breaking bread with.
If not for my instinctive inability to cry in front of strangers, I probably would have cried in church. I just about did, anyway, coming back from the communion cup.
It was a strange, temporally disconnected moment, a rush of sights and smells and that inexplicable feeling of times long past, and as I walked the aisle I walked Hallsville First United Methodist and all my UM Army church sanctuaries and Ceta Canyon and my living room from that moment-- one of those I treasure-- that I brought the bread and the wine to our little devotional menagerie.
I hope you were taking communion with me last Sunday; even if you weren't at the altar I hope you were sharing a meal with friends, I hope you were savoring a glass of red wine, I hope there was a warm oven in your kitchen, some shadow at least of Christ's table. Most Sundays are about God's presence in the church where I am; World Communion Sunday is about God's presence in all of you.
I spent Sunday afternoon, as I spend most Sunday afternoons these days, at the Barnes and Noble down at the Grove, curled up in a corner and reading devotional literature, homework and E-mail and Yearbook at least 45 minutes' bus ride away. But I wanted some of you to join me, to sit down for coffee, to share something tangible. I hereby apologize for how horrible a conversationalist I am over the phone: I need all those physical signals of when people are going to talk or I run all over them; I need to see people's faces to know what they're saying. I needed you there, I wanted you there, and I'd have talked about how much I'm loving Lauren F. Winner's books and how much I needed a Sabbath and how, on a day like that, LA isn't so hazy, and you can see straight through to the mountains. And mostly I'd whisper the one thing that is always on my mind: I want you to stay.
I am a senior now, there, I admit it, I am a senior now and this phase of life comes to an end come May. I'm buttressing myself with my friends, and I love them, and I'm glad to live here, live now, but the one thing I can never tell them, the one thing I can never ask of them is that which is always on my mind. I want them to stay. I have no right to ask it; they have every right and privelege and reason to scatter across the world, and yet-- nonetheless-- I wish they'd stay. I wish you'd come. I wish this, my house, my home, my hobbit hole, my Anatevka and my Star's Hollow, were not so in jeopardy.
And yet there is still a day to remind us, you and you and you and I, we are all in communion, wherever I go and wherever you go, one loaf and one cup, that is still our portion. And when you arrive-- you all need to come someday-- maybe I will bake bread and we can taste it like we know it. |
| | Posted 10/12/2007 3:40 AM - 31 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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