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simply put
you can't get into or out of Communion
for you can't get into or out of Spirit
you're already
there
we're already
Communion
or
in other words
can God
unbecome God
so
enjoying Communion
arises from expressing in daily life
we are Communion
and this is
neither religious nor nonreligious
neither spiritual nor unspiritual
an atheist can no more
step outside Spirit
than a theist can
step outside Spirit
for
Communion
is
and hence
Communion is and becomes
so we, too, become and happen
the question is then -
"How much of Life will I welcome
into my heart?"
* * *
I sit alone in this Prayer Room. Candles are aglow. Tired, I sit. Wearied, I prepared for others to share this Communion and Celebration, after pouring my heart out this morning in the Message, and my having been awake long before dawn.
From behind my seat arises the beautiful chant of Tibetan monks, a special treat for others to share with me. I rest in peace, alone, with eyes closed and breathing with ease. I enjoy the chant and feel myself becoming one with it. I hear no arrival and, therefore, after a time I open my eyes, I see no one, and I stand.
I turn toward the bread and juice, representing the One Life, I AM, meant to be shared tonight with others. I, with an odd feeling, am determined that I, even though alone, will offer myself the Communion and recall that even alone I am not alone. I lift the elements in self-oblation, pure ecstasy, entering the Mystery, the ecstasy of the Divine. I dip and partake.
I leave and go to the grocery store. I purchase some dipped ice cream: big dips of peanut butter, dark chocolate, white chocolate. I enjoy some TV. I sleep, snuggled up in an old recliner, alone, not alone.
* * *
The above rumination from April 8, 2005, when I was a Christian pastor, reminded me my feelings of being alone were an expression of my solitude in God. This aloneness, when apart or with others, is a spacious solitariness I can embrace gladly as integral to the particular way the Way manifests for me, and likely many others. So, I wrote, after that night:
I befriend even the pain that can arise in feeling forsaken and see how some are called to enter forsakenness, or denial, or betrayal, to embody a Life of true Communion, rather than the facile togetherness that is itself an avoidance of the intimacy I share with this, My Love.
One who is able to befriend aloneness needs pity from no one for that aloneness. Rather, sad is the one who cannot find the Communion within his or her aloneness and, thus, is very lonely.
* * *
Ironically, through our embracing aloneness, we embrace Communion with others, the living rite of our unborn, innate Togetherness. Indeed, we do not find or create Communion; we are conceived in Communion.
How ironic, then, I should have been blessed to partake of the rite of Holy Communion alone in that room. Communion, indeed, not mere sharing as persons, arises from heart-with-heart. Communion is not first person with person, but spirit with spirit. The spiritual contemplative sees the Way entails a sharing of solitude with solitude, or aloneness with aloneness ~ being, Love with Love.
* * *
(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
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