The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless ... beyond speech ... beyond concept.
*Thomas Merton
* * *
The small group, about ten, meets in the little chapel for Wednesday night Eucharist. Everyone seems happy. I sit quietly, enjoy. Each person here is a mystery within a Mystery. Here, before the Eucharist and our prayers, joyfulness is a way of loving. Here, laughter is a way of saying we take this seriously. I am tired, words from the rite seem to slide by my ears, most untouched by the mind. I feel that is okay, too. How could we miss the beauty of the humor of Body and Blood, which means, likewise, the humor of being alive together, this group with blood cascading throughout our bodies? Yes, Body and Blood, but not just His, ours. I think most Christians totally miss that. How many miracles had to happen to get us all together, now, one Blood and one Body in this one place? Is our sitting here, and laughing, praying, eating and drinking, His sitting and laughing and praying and eating and drinking, too? Yes. Why not? Possibly, then, could it be laughter is a most sublime form of praise in places like this, sharing like this? Could it be the more we open our hearts to one another, the more we discover laughter to be a natural expression of being together?
* * *
In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.
*Annie Dillard
*Move cursor over pictures for photographer and title.
