A Positively Poetic Priest

 "All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia." BCP 499 Last year at St. Peter's, I participated in 21 funerals. An average of 1.75 per month, though the experience was not as spread out as the average. It was a record year for me. As a parish priest, I lead or participate in a fair number of funerals on a regular basis, but even for the larger, well-staffed, parish I currently serve, we had a lot of funerals. Some of the additional funerals were because of previous COVID delays, but most were simply the passing on of church and community members. Many people tend to think that funerals are upsetting and sad, and they can be. They can also be a celebration and a gift of shared grief, human connection, and joy about life. A good funeral is a service of celebration and grief, a letting go and holding on, a paradox of the heart. A good funeral brings people together and allows the building of connection.  A good funeral...

As an Episcopal priest I understand, in mind, body, and heart, the central nature of the Eucharist and the sharing of Jesus' body and blood in bread and wine. For the last five years, every Sunday (barring vacation), and countless times during the week, I have taken, blessed, broken, and shared bread and wine with other followers of Jesus. I have seen the difference it has made in the lives of the lonely, sick, dying, beginning anew, and weary from daily life. I also know what a difference it has made in my own life to be able to share with others in the simple act of blessing and breaking bread. However, I also know what a difference my experience in the five years before my ordination made in my understanding of Eucharist and receiving Communion. For the last ten years I have been on a gluten, dairy, and soy free diet because of health problems. Celiac disease, lactose intolerance, poly cystic ovarian syndrome, all of which can be helped and/or managed by fasting from particul...

We have many names for the ritual of gathering together to eat the bread and wine which Jesus told us to do in memory of him: Holy Communion, Eucharist, Mass, or the Lord's Supper. They all mean the same thing: the community of God's people gathered together to worship God in the eating of bread and wine which takes on special meaning in some way as the Body and Blood of Jesus. (The theological differences of transubstantiation, full union, real presence, are not what I am debating now.) The history of traditions around the Eucharist, the giving thanks to God, is long and wide. Some churches celebrate with unleavened bread, some with leavened bread. Some churches use wine, some use juice. Some traditions specify who is allowed to participate, specifying that those who wish to do so must be baptized in their church, some churches accept the baptisms of other churches, while some churches allow anyone to participate whether they have been baptized or not. The Episcopal Chu...