We were the next row up.

The communion participants filed silently, reverently and awkwardly around the cushy rolling chairs that barely fit under our conference style tables. This line of devotees moved on mission to stand single file in front of a fleshy, thoughtfully prepared wheat-free, vegan loaf of broken bread and a cup of what the friends of my youth used to call ‘knuckle wine’. A goblet of generous proportions that parishioners, while trying to dip their bread, managed to include their hangnails, chipped polish and -as by the telltale signs of crimson stained skin- their knuckles. 

Knuckle Wine.

But I digress.

My row was next and I was wrestling with what to do. 
Despite the obvious sanitary risk, my conflict was more around the fact that I have other allergies not mentioned in the preamble to our gathering that more than likely have not been accounted for in our spiritual simulation. 

Do I pretend to dip? Do I dip and stand on faith? Do I abstain?

Ultimately I decided to take the bread, dip the leavened bit into the crimson wine-sans knuckles, and gently place it in a napkin between the folds of my journal 
and cry.

I wept because in that moment I finally realized my place.

My place is among but not fully of, a part here and a part elsewhere. Under a palm in between the city and the hill country. Almost there...always.
........
Isn’t that all of us a little bit? 

In our families, neighborhoods, workplaces and friendships? In this world?
A little bit among and a little bit always elsewhere.

And sometimes you are in and among. 

Those moments of soul satiety where you are enraptured by your belonging are beautiful but rare...

and incomplete in their truth telling. 

The eucharist table is the equalizer. It held the ardent alliance till death came to part them-as well as it held still; the one on the brink of choosing to consume and be filled with the arbiter of death itself - at the very table of life. 

This table of invitation and choosing...It holds the entirety of the tension of yes, always, now, why and not yet. 
And that is where I always want to be. Holding the tension at the table of both life and awareness of an impending death. Rejoicing in the abundance with respect to the depth of what simultaneously is being taken away.

Only you can know the answer to your place at the communal table. A place set aside for gathering away from the noise of the world for a moment’s rest to acknowledge the affinity for which you gather and to center and ground yourself back into the The Great Knowing from which you came.

Trust this.

Your response to what you find here is your own worship
And these writings and this work that I place before you serve as my testament to forever be in fully rapt and compassionate communion with you. May this space and this work I share with you encourage you too to always be attentive to holding that tension in between. 

xoxoxo,

Joy!