Communion
Beneath the whirl of what is
Is a deep down quiet place…
This is the place where
Unnamed hungers
Are fed, the place
Of clear water…
Carla Grosch-Miller
It was a day I arrived at Kate and Syed’s flat, to find Syed intently focused on pressing piles of pomegranates and making many bottles of juice. It was how Kate offering me a glass of the tart, sweet, rich, ruby liquid, brought more kinds of refreshment than one. It was all the moments when Kate has said or written something incisive and life-giving, just like that juice. Moments of tasting the richness of community, and shared life. Moments of communion.
It was the time I stood at a communion rail and tasted bread handed to me and handmade by someone gay, who, despite every reason not to, gives their life daily to life and love as a vicar. It was the goodness of this living out love in a multitude of ways, the blessing of a new friendship, the beauty of making bread and making church.
It was park benches with snacking toddlers and being part of many family tables of all shapes and sizes, and benches by the sea, and being given a cold can of gin from a fellow camper at a little festival where I was known as a climber and a queer person. Someone saying, take this, eat and drink, and I remembered the One who made me who I am, and gave and always gives all of who he/she/they are, to fill us with life.
It was plates piled high with pizza around a table full of my friend Beth’s family, where, after years apart, feeding one another and finding words for how our lives were now and what we were hungering for, a meal with teenagers and old friends and little ones and the insistent eyes of a small dog that believes she deserves good things, spoke of love.
It was all the times when, although I don’t yet have a big, solid wood, felt-tip-scarred, kitchen table of my own, I could make a feast, one of the things I love most in the world.
It was half a pork pie with my grandad who can’t eat much now, but fed me with stories of his own pilgrimages and precarious adventures amongst the fells of Cumbria, many years ago, and the blood that flows through my veins as I sit and eat bread and drink life giving water on the same hills, that makes me part him and part my nana and means I will always want to walk with a small four-legged pilgrim at my heels.
It was all the moments of pausing with someone for a crumbling chocolate digestive, a glass of wine after work, an up late talking in the kitchen snack, an ‘I’ve just put lots of bits out’ lunch, a big glass of water, a ‘can I give your dog a treat’, an ordinary cuppa.
It was the online communion offered by a Lutheran priest I’d followed on twitter, offered for those who couldn’t, for many reasons, receive it elsewhere; it was finding myself last thing at night on zoom with strangers on Eastern Time and sharing fragments of their stories. La Croix and crackers and grapes and chocolate and diet coke and tender listening and love.
It was taking and eating and then sharing this idea with others I met with every week, each person bringing something to taste and something to drink, passing this love to one another, knowing God made all of it. The patient hearts and humble slowness of chewing and richness of flavour and gentle smiles at what food and drink we each had found to hand that day. The stumbling over liturgy cobbled together from our different lives and the holy moment of being together, and noticing it.
It was the communion around a fire in a forest clearing, sat on slightly-too-small logs, and being in a place that deeply welcomed all, and held together a group of strangers. A place where there were others who love silence and campfires and trees, and love the stillness of the outdoors and the song of birds and the sound of the ocean. Others who fully love those who love someone they’ve been told it is wrong to love.
Recently a friend reminded me of how, a few years ago, soon after we graduated, I had gathered a group of us in a local park for communion, which I’d totally forgotten happened. And I felt grateful, when many memories of that part of my life are hard to swallow. And I remember other communions, in the more distant past, Easter with childhood friends, pews of fleece-clad quiet bodies in village churches, trays of tiny cups, familiar liturgy, winter midnights, lurching up a steep farm track to a tender chaos of dogs and children and shared lunch and prayers and playing my guitar.
It was all these moments, calling me to pause on this ground and taste and see, offering an unexpected sacrament. Each time I am in a place of home and share a meal or a cheese toastie or humous and crisps or fresh pomegranate, it is holy.
Tasting something that has grown from the earth. Time to speak, and listen, to eat and drink, to sit together after getting too hot over too many pans. Sweeping a stone floor, or looking out at a garden of apple trees as you wash up, or rhubarb cake made by another new climber. Coffee from many different mugs. All of it is a love feast.
All of it speaks of God. Poured out, and present in the kind eyes of the person handing you bread, the tang of juice on your tongue, the satisfaction of people fed with good things, the compassion and care in making time to sit together - or be together in the moments there is no time to sit, but only to hand each other cups of strong coffee - or just to leave a note and a tupperware of leftovers that says, I see you, and I want to feed you.
This is the body of God, in this wholeness and this brokenness together. This is the bread of life. This is love, blood that gives life in the things hard to live through, and in moments of meals where we taste and see goodness, just for an hour.
PS Kate and Syed are part of the really brilliant Phosphoros Theatre, who I’ve been grateful to share meals and work with many times. Go to watch or support them if you can.
Blessed are we
Growing as mustard seeds
Tasting your goodness
Blessed are we
Led by still waters
Give us this water
Blessed are you
Who is the space in our open hands
The ache in our open hearts
The sound and silence in our prayer
The waiting and holding and love
In us and between us
Blessed are you
Baker of all bread
Presser of all wine
Listener of all stories
Blessed are we, one in you
Blessed are we, fed in you
Blessed are we, found in you
(by me, written for an LGBTQ+ communion)