Monday, March 23, 2009

Christ as Food

My childhood, though rich in spiritual ideas and discipline, was deliberately lacking in the usual religious symbols, those objects or pictures or rituals that can stand for some inexact or mysterious truth.  No crucifix, no communion ceremony (no bread, no wine), no ashes, no genuflection, no baptism, no Eucharist, no reconciliation, no last rites, no icons, no Lent, no Palm Sunday or Good Friday, no stations of the cross, no vespers, and no liturgy whatsoever.

It is entirely possible to be Christian without these things, and a good many fine, practicing Christians feel no need, say, for broken bread and shared wine every Sunday.  This was not the case for me, however.  There was simply nothing to keep me coming to church.  For 30 years I was quite happy spending Sunday mornings reading the paper or sitting outside in the sun, or painting, painting.

About five years ago the Christian symbols themselves began to call me in ways that caught my attention.  They appeared in my dreams.  I was painting in a choir loft, looking down on a Mass.  I was searching for a seat in a church full of icons.  I was joining the activity of the Holy Family.  These and other dreams came on the heels of events that had shaken me, to be sure.  But they also felt like something new working its way to the surface.  I thought of it in artistic terms – a new beauty asking for my response.

I went to New Orleans, then a city of hot religion, jam-packed with the same religious symbols available in Voodoo shops as in the cathedral book store.  I was revolted by Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.  I sought out a Jungian analysis with a priest who provided space for the laying out of these symbols.  We talked.  I began this journal, strangely I thought, with a symbol I barely understood – the Annunciation.  I still don’t understand, and the symbols are still having their way with me.

Then my mother died.  She was the strongest religious influence in my life.  Deeply spiritual, she was a natural and talented religious iconoclast.  In the end she threw out even her own conventions and abandoned herself to her God without any religious mediation at all.  It was a natural progression for her, but it was stunning to see.  I was going in the other direction, and her death, in a way, set me free.  Within a year I was gone.

I was here, in Miami.  I spent that first summer praying.  I wrote the prayers down.  By September I had found my church, rich in symbols and smells, full of liturgy and exotic ritual.  I was delighted to dress in what I could only call costume with my friends, to abandon our usual banter and join in performance of sacred ritual, and to be urged to take it seriously.  I have.

This brings me to my point, which is the Last Supper.  For me, this is the primary Christian symbol, which we ritualize every Sunday in our Mass and participation in Communion.  We eat Christ’s body and drink Christ’s blood, and we do this in all seriousness, with the greatest possible respect.

Most liturgical Christians participate in this ritual as a matter of course.  I do not.  For me it is counter-intuitive and miraculous.  Every Sunday it catches me off-guard, as it must have caught Jesus’ companions 2000 years ago.  Here we are, my friends and I, who two days ago were working together, gossiping, laughing, working out day-to-day concerns, now eating the broken body and spilled blood of Christ together.  What does it mean?  I t can only mean that we are all broken and shared, and that we are meant to know it.

Mangoes and palms drop ripened fruit.  Seeds break open and sprout.  Mosquitoes give their lives to lizards every day in my back yard.  But to my knowledge their sacrifice is completely unselfconscious.  What this symbol of Christianity says to me is, “Become fully conscious of the sacrifice you accept and the sacrifice you must make in return.  Take in and digest this life that is given for your sake, and become that sacrifice yourself.”

This awareness and conscious activity is what it means to be fully human – that is, to give expression to the Christ from a place deep within.  This awareness is painful.  Betrayal is a fact.  And yet we are asked to stay conscious, to give deliberately all that we have, all that we are, for each other.  It will happen anyway, as surely as ripe mangoes fall.  We are asked to make this sacrifice a conscious and constant testament, and to withstand its consequences, and to know we are made of Love.

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