It is always about this this time of year that thoughts of new beginnings come to mind. There is one inevitable morning in August when the dripping humidity of summer seems to abate, and the evening light slants low on the horizon signaling change. We can see it in the migratory birds who, despite climate change, still make their ancient journey south, amazing us with their stamina all over again. Many colleges and universities have begun their freshman orientation and if you are living in the south, you probably already have been in school for a week. Conversations that open with “How was your summer?” haven’t quite begun, but the languid days of July have ended and on this mid-August weekend we are suspended in a quiet lull, as if caught in the eye of a hurricane waiting to be propelled into September.
But wait—I have not taken my vacation yet! While the summer light is particularly beautiful right now, I admit to wanting to cover my ears at the talk of a season ending. My time away from work will begin next week when I plant myself near the ocean until Labor Day. Over the summer, I get to participate in services in a small white clapboard chapel that I have attended since I was a child. Growing up, spending summers on this tiny island off the coast of Connecticut, I could have never imagined that I would be the assisting priest celebrating the Eucharist and serving a community that I know as intimately as my own family. On this island, I am serving the children of friends whose faces remind me of their parents (or grandparents!) whom I snuck out with as a teenager. I am working with members of the altar guild and vestry, some of whom attended my wedding in this same church 35 years ago. Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to baptize the granddaughter of a family I have known for nearly half a century and soon, I will officiate at the wedding of my goddaughter with my own daughter in attendance as a bridesmaid.
If you have been attending church these last weeks, you will know that we have taken a pause from our reading of Mark and are deep into John’s reflection on the bread of life. We have journeyed from the feeding of the 5,000 to an image of eating the flesh and blood of Jesus that even his disciples admitted was “difficult”. It is easy to push away from the slightly scandalous idea of eating and drinking the incarnate God in Jesus—but to do that is to perhaps miss the point of this intimate ritual and the community it fosters.
Richard Rohr wrote, “The very notion of presence is inherently and necessarily relational and also somehow embodied.” I cannot think of a place that is more embodied and more relational than the island community where for 60 years I have been both child, parent, aunt, friend and now priest. For me, the mystery of the Eucharist keeps unfolding. It is the reality of Christ’s heart and hands—Jesus’ presence in the bread and the wine - that remind us of who we are in this world. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” The point is not what happens to the bread and wine when consecrated—not really. The point is that when we receive, we are joined in something as ancient as a prayer and as profound as the ocean tide burying our toes in wet sand.
