An order for communing
A recent Tweet by Diana Butler Bass: A friend sent me this poem - in
honor of those of us longing for the Eucharist to escape the boundaries
of rules, and rush into the world w/the healing wildness of Christ's true
presence. Take these words, inwardly digest this wisdom. They wish to
be anonymous.
An order for communing in a pandemic - by Anonymous
She took a loaf of bread,
broke it and gave it,
half to the hungry, the poor, the millions
whose gap-toothed pantries
are emptying,
dwindling sand racing
through the widening neck of an hourglass
and she felt the weight
of a sacrament pressing
into her soul
as the body and blood of Christ
spilled out of doors,
into streets,
into homes,
flowing as freely,
as slick and messy,
as uncontrolled,
as it did from his own tortured body,
as if God really could be present,
everywhere and in everything.
Bass herself commented:
To withhold the food of God, to hoard the feast, seems fundamentally
at odds with the resurrected Christ and the bounty of the Spirit.
My plea is to open the church's stores, through a reimagining of tradi-
tion, for the sake of healing love. Why withhold medicine for the sick
and suffering? Would Christ do so? There's only one answer to that
central theological question: No.
And to accuse God's people of being impatient and greedy children,
shaped more by consumerism and individualism than the life of Jesus,
is about the cruelest, most paternalistic, least Christian thing a church
leader could say right now.
St Margaret’s News
6
April 2020