Stumble into Jesus

I was scheduled to bear the Chalice at St. Paul's Episcopal yesterday. I SO did not want to perform this service! As much as I'd tried to wiggle off the roster of readers and Chalists in the past six months, I had given my word and as a matter of personal integrity, I HAD to show up. For five years, I have loved offering that most holy of cups to the followers of Christ, but lately I've been a hypocrite, listening to, but not reciting with everyone else, a liturgy practiced by rote, that I now experience as hollow and empty of deep spiritual meaning. These words spoken by millions, every Sunday around the globe, which in itself is a fantastically miraculous thing.

A wise woman told me that when she felt conflicted with the church she’d go anyway and pray to hear just one thing. WIth her voice in my head, I showed up to offer what I could to the "service": meditative peace and serenity. I may have been reciting internal, melodic mantras instead of the Nicene Creed, but my heart was in the right place.

So, having made the commitment to show up and serve, and much as I had to drag my butt there, I was relieved to find my friend Doug as compatriot in the tag team bearing of the Holy Cup, offering the masses their elixir of Christ's blood with the following blessing: "The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation" or " May the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep you in everlasting life.” Ok, this was the hard part? I kept forgetting what I was to say! And you have to alternate it and Doug and I are supposed to be saying the same thing at the same time, but who cares, cuz the awesome thing is bearing witness for folks experiencing their faith in this distinct version of "care and feeding of the soul".

(I think it's the blood part that really bugs me. Personally, I'd much rather offer chocolate chip cookies and breast milk to followers seeking salvation and forgiveness, because in a lot of ways, it is the hurt and broken child that many bring to the sacrament of communion. Ok. It's my hurt and broken child that I have brought to the ritual I just feel certain that milk and cookies would be what the HOLY BLESSED VIRGIN MARY would do... unless she was PMS or in menopause and then it would probably sound like, "make your own damned cookies, I'm busy!")


When all who came to the rail had been served, I followed our Rector, Scott, keeper of the Body of Christ, with my Cup of Salvation into the pews to offer bread and wine to a woman not able to stand. Scott stepped into the pew, I followed...

and tripped over the kneeler, stumbled, thrown way off balance but then, voila! caught myself absolutely determined not to spill a single drop of that consecrated blood! The woman's husband touched my hand and kept it there, he looked me in the eye, asked if I was ok. And it was in that moment that I recognized the love of Jesus, right there in church. The stumble took place in slow motion of course, and it was in that moment that I learned how much I do value, for those who seek salvation in it, the chalice of life-giving wine that is so central and integral to Anglican worship. The really sweet part was that the divine child in me crowed, "I didn't spill a drop!".

There was such glee and wonde, pride and delight in the voice of my beloved tender-hearted-CHILD-self! Scott did not join me in any of that - instantly I felt that child silenced for the sake of the sacrament being delivered to this woman unable to stand. I could see in her eyes that the outburst had unhinged her a bit and that my lack of comportment was unexpected and perhaps a little scary. (I am self-aware enough to know that I can be intense and just a little scary). TO say that I found the entire experience tremendously HUMILIATING would not begin to cover it. With the weight of hundreds of eyes watching, I smiled and chuckled quietly, but no other voice was muttered. So, the voice I will continue to recall is that of the one who took my hand and steadied me with a loving heart, looked me in the eye and asked after my condition. Thank you, dear one.


Maybe I'm just getting ready for the seasonal winter/lenten journey of either embracing or rejecting this Jesus guy, as the only son of God. I just want to say, "oh, give me a break!" One God? Come on! What's the point of one God? The "archetypal" Jesus is out there in the world right now, working through people like our rector, Scott, through souls like Doug, who has experienced first-hand the miraculous healing of prayers uttered in Jesus’ name. I’ve seen Jesus dancing to Moby at the Norva, and I've conjured him up holding hands with a stranger at the scene of a horrific car crash, praying for life to be spared. Jesus is awesome in his ability to be in the present moment, but his God status doesn't speak to me, and in truth, it never has, for the simple truth that the experience of women is left out of the entire fable/myth/fairy tale.

Where is the SACRED DIVINE FEMININE IN THE ANGLICAN CHURCH? Sophia, the holy spirit symbolically rendered in DOVE as the physical form of WISDOM was left out of the Bible! (was the feminine just not quite important enough for those men making choices, laying down law...about what got said, what got written down, not to mention tracking down the witnesses to the red letter words that actually fell from the mans' tongue, lo those hundred years earlier?) You know, if there was one book to leave out of the Bible, why do you think WISDOM was left out? It was left out because it represented the intuitive mind, the mind that doesn't require a face for God in order to believe it exists. WISDOM represents the human capacity and hard-wired programming for higher knowledge available to each of us if we will only find our salvation in our own bodies, minds, in our hearts, not in the sky resting on clouds too far away to feel or touch. Unless you're dead.


Today, Jesus is not the way for me. I get that I am a divine being and so are you. I get that one of my lessons in this incarnation is to see the value in all humanity, not just in women and our ability to create, which hello?, kind of gives us the power to hold the future of the human race in our beautiful, soft, warm wombs, doesn't it? I will not, cannot, worship a God who plays a passive aggressive power game that ends in the sacrifice of the BELOVED. If that's the story, give me Shakespeare, he was so much more eloquent with Tragedy! It feels like the sequel to Abrahams' drama in "Old Testament v. 2". More blood, more suffering, more, "Oh! I am not worthy"? No thank you.

Jesus had a message: Love yourself. Love your God, Love your friends, your neighbors, your enemies. Beyond that, I am fatigued by all the WORDS that come between me and what it feels like to hold, to own, to offer something sacred, to clutch it in both my hands, to not spill a drop.

With due reverence and honor for your journey,
Namste`,
Connie
Connie Hanna
Norfolk VA
1-14-07