This morning, while wearing my figurative deacon hat, I was privileged to assist with administering communion. I held the wine while one of my favorite pastors held the bread, and we intoned “this is the body of Christ, broken for you,” and “this is the blood of Christ, shed for you”, respectively. It’s a powerful experience for a believer.

However, I am what I am. Therefore I could not help but notice in some small part of my mind that the diversity of the faithful extends to their approach to communion. Some take such a tiny pinch of bread that they can’t dip it in the wine without getting their fingers wet. Of these, some are oblivious; other walk away visibly pondering the correct remedy. Suck you fingers? Wipe your hands on your shirt? Ignore it? On the other hand, some congregants tear off such a hunk of bread that it appears they are about to mop up an unusually saucy bowl of penne al’arrabiata, and walk off, cheeks bulging, nearly staggering with the effort. This was the 8:00 service, attended mostly by our senior members, who have been taking communion for more than a half-century. I would expect them to have gotten the hang of this by now. Yet if I were to plot it on a graph, with rip-off-half-a-baguette on one end and take-a-crumb on the other, it would be a nearly flat line, not a bell curve.

We’re an odd bunch, all of us, but beloved nonetheless.

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