First Communion

For the past month or so my family and I have been attending our neighborhood Episcopalian church called the Incarnation. My wife was raised Catholic but has not attended mass for years as she has had too many irreconcilable differences with the Church being as she is a most independent woman. I have had little relationship with organized churches except for the church of Religious Science by Ernest Holmes, and that was due to the church in Pacific Grove, Pacific Coast Church, having a strong connection to the teachings of the East, which I am most familiar and comfortable with. We started attending this church as a need for a spiritual community, a sangha, especially for my boy to have. I have found that this church, with its emphasis on inclusion and acceptance of the fact that everyone has their own unique relationship with God, where questioning is encouraged, allows us to feel right at home. At first, we had wrongly assumed that one had to be an Episcopalian to come up and take the Eucharist, but we found out that Communion here was an open table, that all were invited, even, as I am, not baptized.
So this past Sunday my wife and I walked up to the altar to take the Host. I invoked my friend, St. Francis, to walk beside me, who has been my bridge to Jesus the Christ (along with the teachings of A Course in Miracles). It has been a long time since I have participated in such a Christian ritual; in fact, I have shied away from churches all of this life. So in a sense, I was walking up there as an act of forgiveness to the church (all churches) for all the suffering that has been done by them in the name of Jesus and God, so I can see past such egoic, fearful actions and see the Christ that resides in all bodies, whether in an individual or in a group. Father Matt, the rector of Incarnation, told me that everyone is free to approach the Eucharist with any belief. So I took the communion as literally having the Divine descend upon my tongue, just as years before a holy woman from India, Karunamayi, wrote the Saraswati mantra upon my tongue with honey. To have the Godhead upon one’s tongue is something not to take in vain. The Buddha called for Right Speaking. To speak rightly is to speak truth, yet only if it is helpful, needed and or kind. It is also to speak consciously. When one speaks consciously one speaks less. So that was what I invoked and affirmed for me to do, to speak rightly.

So that was my first taste of Communion. And though I do not need any ritual to remind me of my infinite connection with All That Is, I am looking forward to the next time I kneel before the altar and hold out my empty hands.