Likita Japa: A practice for contemplative reading and writing

One of my classes this semester is Contemplative Prayer in Christianity. It’s great. I have a great semester of classes, but I can’t stop talking about this one so I guess it’s my favorite. I am eager to consider how it will transform in an online context. It’s tremendous. So if you’re visiting this space from Contemplative Prayer, welcome. In preparation for our conversation on Thursday, try out the following practice.

Supplies:

• your copy of Chapters on Prayer by Evagrius (or another contemplative or sacred text, if you’re doing this practice but not in class with me, or a mantra or intention you’re working with).

• your journal, a notebook, or a piece of paper (this is not a practice you can perform on a computer. Do it longhand, trust me.)

• At least one, and as many pens as you like (feel free to use different colors or widths. You’ll see why as we carry on.)

• a timer (optional). This practice only took me about 15 minutes, and it can take you shorter or longer than that. If you’re pressed for time, I’d encourage you to set a timer for 15 minutes, and get as far as you can in that time. It’s not a race though, so the timing isn’t really important. What’s important is the experience you have with the text—it’s rhythm, its consistency, its voice; what happens to you and in you as you work with it.

Take the time to read through the steps before you complete the activity.

Steps:

1. From your text, choose a sentence or line that spoke to you this time around. Think one sentence or one line. A complete thought. A paragraph is likely too long. I chose two sentences.

“Whether you pray along with the brethren or alone, strive to make your prayer more than a mere habit. Make it a true inner experience. ”

— #41, Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer

2. Write the line down, word for word, on your piece of paper.

3. Write it down again, right beside the first line.

4. Write it down, over and over, word for word. Notice what happens inside you as you write the line over and over. This isn’t a test. Are you having trouble remembering it? Have a look at it as you write it down, until you can remember it. Is it echoing? Can you hear the text repeating itself in your head? Do you repeat the text in your own voice as you write it? Are you forgetting words, or adding words? Notice what’s happening. Take your time. You might even want to say it out loud as you write it.

5. Don’t be afraid to get a little creative with your writing. Want to change shape or direction? Do it.

6. Or get a lot creative with it. Use one or several colored pens. Allow the sentence to blossom and expand, and see where this practice takes you.

7. See if you can finish a shape or fill a page. This should be fun, and while it might be generative, it shouldn’t be difficult or stressful. Notice what’s happening.

Take note of your experience trying this practice, so we can talk about it in class. Something to consider: you don’t have to be bound by the shape of the paper. You can use a different shape (like the circle that I used) or any other shape the passage feels like it lends itself to. This might also be an opportunity to explore sacred geometry and how it might affect the phrase you’ve chosen: does a circle, a triangle, a yantra, or a cross feel like a meaningful shape? Feel free to try writing the sentence or phrase in that shape, and see what happens. The creativity should be an option, not an obstacle. This practice is called Likita Japa: a devotional reading and writing practice. (I learned it from Chanti Tacoronte-Perez and Tracee Stanley.) Have your paper available to show and talk about when we meet next. Can’t wait to talk more about it on Thursday!

Online Yoga with Jess: March 23

If you know me, you know that I like to do the stuff in person: I prefer in-person classes to online ones, I’d rather meet for coffee or a walk than talk on the phone, I’d almost always rather look you in the face and take you by the hand. Alas, that’s not possible right now, is it? COVID-19 has us all learning and practicing and working remotely, for our own and others’ safety. We are all in need of community and practice, and I really want to make the space for us to practice together. So let’s do it!

• Join me for a one-hour gentle movement class this Monday, March 23 at 5:30 pm on Zoom. This week we’ll say a quick hello, do 15-20 minutes of gentle movement, and then transition into some Yoga Nidra. For class, a yoga mat, a blanket, at least two pillows or a bolster or two will all be useful—but don’t let not having the props stop you! Use your favorite comfy cuddle stuff. For more info on Yoga Nidra as a practice, have a look here. By now, we’ve all heard of Zoom, yes? (You can have a look and set up an account here, if you haven’t done so yet.) Hopefully, it will serve us as a great platform to see each others’ faces, and to work cooperatively and affectionately with our bodies.

• class is every Monday at 5:30 pm EDT. After the first week, we’ll be doing a variety of practices. Every week, we’ll move a bit, we’ll rest a bit, we’ll breathe a bit. The classes are designed to be gentle and accessible. Having a mat helps, but it isn’t mandatory. If you need other props, I’ll be sure to let you know on the day, and to suggest easy things around the house to use. (Classes will continue weekly through early May, at which point I’ll reassess and see if and what kind of changes might be necessary.)

• class is about movement, breath, healing and community. If you’re able, please use your camera when you call in. If the camera feels like too much right now, I get it. Don’t sweat it. You’ll be able to see me, and I’ll be demoing postures from time to time, but if I can, I’ll also want to see you, particularly if you have questions or concerns. This is not going to be a vigorous practice. No shade, I love them; but what I want to offer is something that warms us up gently and allows us to feel ourselves, and work with our energy. It’s not always easy to do that if you’re muscling your way into an arm balance.

• class is not meant to be a stand-in for medical advice. You know your body better than anyone else. Listen to it. If something doesn’t feel right, back off, or ask for a modification. Take rest when you need it. Don’t push.

• class is about being generous and compassionate with ourselves and one another. New to yoga? Great. Don’t know all the Sanskrit names for postures? No problem. This is not a time or practice to demand a lot of yourself or others. So: no shade, no body shaming, no judgment, internally or externally.

• class is free to take, but not free to teach. I’m offering this practice free of charge, in part because if I were teaching it on campus, it would be free of charge. Additionally, I am not interested in creating any barriers to practice, especially if you need it and feel like it’s difficult to access for whatever reason. Having said that, if you feel moved to show your appreciation of my efforts in a tangible or financial way, reach out to me and we can talk about that. It is by no means an expectation or a requirement. I want to practice with you, no strings attached, no payment necessary.

This class, while designed for my HDS community, is available to anyone in my network who’s interested. If you’re interested, but not a member of the HDS community, please let me know via Facebook. I will create a closed group where I’ll post the number for that week’s call-in. I’ll post it on Friday for the following Monday. (For this first week, I can just send it to you via DM.)

I’ve only recently begun to teach online, so this will be an adventure. I’m looking forward to discovering how we can care for ourselves and for each other in this new frontier. If this sounds at all useful to you, I hope I’ll see you there. xo

Our First Response

If I let myself, I can forget about the power of yoga. 

I can forget, and think that the practice is only for fit white women of privilege who are more interested in how they look in their hundred-dollar yoga pants than how they function in their communities. 

I can start to think that teaching yoga at a time when people are frightened, frustrated, anxious, lonely, or isolated is frivolous. Indulgent, even. Who has time for sun salutations when my job, my housing, my health, my life is at stake. 

I can start to think that my practice should somehow be sacrificed on the altar of how hard I should work, on my devotion to the work, that what matters is not my consistency or devotion in caring for myself, but my self-righteous and tireless capacity to care for others.

And then I remember that for me, the practice is an act of prayer. It’s not exercise; it’s liturgy. It’s ritual. I remember that the word used on the New Testament for spirit, pneuma, the word used in the yoga tradition for the vitalizing, energizing life force, prana, are both describing the inhale and exhale that move through my torso and what keeps that rhythm going. 

When I was a girl, my mother told me to memorize the Bible, and when I was in trouble passages would come back to me and give me comfort or encouragement. It didn’t work so well for Proverbs or Romans, but it has worked well for Audre Lorde. 

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. ”

— Audre Lorde

This virus, this pandemic, it is scaring people. It is showing us the worst of ourselves: our impatience, our alienation, our ineptitude or confusion, our racism and fear, our demand that others evolve to where we think we are. Fear makes us small, petty, irritable, greedy, and unkind.

It makes us stop breathing. Have you had a deep breath today? Go ahead, take one now. Soften your belly, fill up your torso. Inhale. Exhale.

Take another one.

“There is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from conflict, anguish and suffering, but the flight from disunity and separation, to unity and peace in the love of other men. ”

— Thomas Merton

At times when systems and institutions tell you to be afraid, to prepare for the worst, to hunker down, it’s hard to know who and what to trust. It’s hard to discern what is risk, what’s acceptable loss, what’s necessary or superfluous: until you hold up your values. What do I value? Healing. The practice and experience of restoration, in relationship—with one’s self, with one’s community, with one’s environment. Or put another way: am I whole? Are my relationships whole? Am I right with the Universe?

What do I value? Transformation. The opportunity and practice of growth, of becoming a new, expansive, changed person, from center to edge, completely and thoroughly. How will this circumstance offer me the chance to do something new? Who might I become in this work? How will it move me closer to the center of myself?
I also deeply value Community. A year ago, when I was considering what to offer the next three years of my time, attention, and money, I chose an in-person program because being in space with others matters to me. I appreciate the energy, the vibration, the nature of others, even when they piss me off, because we live social lives. We may have buried our faces in screens and lost our attention spans and our capacity for patience and interaction, but we use the internet for social interaction (the best and the worst of it). I can deal with some of that, but it’s no substitute for the best and worst of in-person stuff.

So now my community has changed. Relationships I’ve built over the last six months or so are shifting, and some of them quite dramatically. I’m one of the lucky ones: I’m not being unhoused in a matter of days, and I don’t have to return (on money I don’t have) to an unsafe or unhealthy living situation. I have a spouse, he has a job, I have a home. We’re both healthy. I’m doing alright.

I’m also grieving. I’m feeling. I’m not going to pretend or be told that I shouldn’t feel some kind of way about what I’m losing.

More than that, I’m grieving with. I’m grieving with my friends who are graduating—maybe?—and my friends who are suddenly moving across the country, and my friends who aren’t sure if going home to their families is safer for them or puts them more at risk.

Finally, I’m leveraging what I have.

I have a table that I will invite folks to. I will make hand-washing a sacred ritual, and we’ll feast and laugh and sigh and ask and listen. I have a car that I’ll pack other people’s belongings into, and take them where I can, if and when they ask me to. I have a deep love of practice, and I’ll dive into that head-first, sustaining my own body, my breath, and my capacity to show up fully. And I have a mat and a smartphone, and a voice that carries. I’ll use those to create digital spaces for folks to get in touch with their bodies. We’ll move together, we’ll breathe together, we’ll chant together, and we’ll create a community of practice together.

Coming soon: a weekly offering of gentle yoga, pranayama (breathwork), samyama (meditation), and community. Please stay tuned. In the meantime, don’t let anyone move you out of your feelings until you’re ready. Breathe. Brush your teeth and drink your water. Wash your hands. Sleep, please sleep. Don’t touch your face. Find something that makes you laugh. Breathe. Eat something. Stay home when you can. Sit quietly, or pray, or chant, or wash the dishes, or do whatever you do that puts you in a state of oneness and connection and surrender. Practice. I will practice, you will practice, and we will see each other in practice.

You're Wearing THAT?

I was in a training last week with a bunch of (other?) ministers. One of them recounted a story that rocked be back on my heels and tuned me into an important anxiety I’m carrying. In pursuit of taking the lesson but leaving the story, I won’t recount it here, but the lesson I take is this: the church is always watching, and the church polices bodies. Even in our time, of pushing boundaries of gender, of pursuing and rejoicing in diversity of being and expression, the church is bound by a painfully narrow scope of what is and is not appropriate ways for its people to live in their bodies.

The church is not free.

I realize this is what scares me about parish ministry. I am nervous, I am downright frightened, of doing my best to live a free, spirit-filled life in pursuit of our collective liberation, and being told by the community I serve that I am simply too much—too big, too loud, too free—to be effectively used by God for good, at least as far as they are concerned. This is not a new phenomenon in my experience of Christianity: I was taught to dress and appear a particular way so I would not cause my brother to stumble. (I was not taught that an idea or approach like this renders me an object without consent or action in another human being’s actions, that these actions without my consent were felonious and with my consent were delicious if complicated, and that my brother should be responsible for his one behavior, and that he should seek my consent before he “stumbles.” None of that makes the lesson on purity training for young Christian women. It is a particularly insidious and harmful way of teaching young women to dissociate from themselves, to be afraid of their own bodies and their own sexuality, and it turns on blame, shame, and a pathological inability for the church to reckon with embodiment and sexuality. We can do better.) I learned to cross my legs at the ankles if i was wearing a skirt, and not at the knee, because at the knee someone might see too much of my leg and have unclean thoughts. I was taught to think of my body as a weapon, a tool of communication with others that I was always having to rein in, to holster and minimize. What do i gain from this? I guess that others can look at me and say they see God on my or in me or through me. Disappointing that they are unable to see this just by looking in my eyes, but that I have to tick boxes of an inventory—How Pure Are You?

I don’t encounter this purity policing in my yoga communities. No one has ever told me that my practicing In that tank top compromises their balance or focus, or their capacity to still their mind in seated subtle practice. No one has ever stepped to me and said that God laid a word on their heart that when I wear short shorts to class I distract the teacher and compromise his ability to deliver the Word, so I should change my wardrobe. No one has ever told me I was chanting the name of God too loudly. I’ve discovered a lot of freedom in this tradition, freedom to experience my body in its fullness, and to hold that fullness as a gift of God, as an expression of God: God is not small, Jess, why should you be small?

Don’t get it twisted: there is plenty of body policing in yoga. The ongoing question of whether one can practice ahimsa and also eat animals… which bodies are yoga bodies… what your modifications say about your practice… the purpose of brahmacarya as truly sexual control or abstinence versus moderation… is transformation possible… props: to use or not to use. (Eye roll.) This is to say nothing of teachers who are preying on seekers and who use their students and students’ bodies to meet their own needs and insecurities. There is also the capitalist phenomenon of how to dress for yoga that functions as a gatekeeper in some spaces. Yoga purity policing exists and it has its own inventory.

This body policing scares me about ministry. I have been in congregations that were restricted by rules of behavior: about dress and diet and appearance, arguing that “the world” should look at us and see us as followers of Christ. (Sad that the world would see that not based on the kindness and generosity, the forgiveness, the growth, with which we treat one another, but instead on our conservative values regarding hemlines and alcohol intake. ) I have a large personality. I no longer try to mitigate it. For folks who don’t know me—and for some who do—it has been a lot to process. I am my mother’s daughter: I know how to be politic and polite and appropriate, and often I find behaving that way means watering down the truth. I tattooed ahimsa (nonviolence) and sayta (truthfulness) to the insides of my arms so I would remember that each without the other is ineffective, though I often have trouble using them both in equal measure. But one thing I can’t control is how other people perceive me. Because I can’t control it, I often try to ignore it.

But the congregation is always watching. I remember, when Barak Obama was elected, I held my breath for years, waiting for some scandal to come out of the woodwork and destroy him and his family, and the pride and joy of black folks who’d elected him along with it. I remember thinking, this man has always, always got to be above reproach. These white folks will take any tiny, stupid little thing they can and use it to torpedo him. He cannot do anything wrong. I feel a similar sense of dread when I consider what it means to serve as a pastor in a church. Not that I can’t do anything wrong; I do a lot wrong. But instead, that folks might often perceive me as doing wrong even if I’m not, and my credibility will be completely compromised. My smile will be too full, my walk will be too provocative, my passion will be misread as rage, my ambition as aggression, and that will be the end of me. I cannot put a foot wrong.

Skating on thin ice.

One thought I’ve often had is how important racial reconciliation is in my own work. I think and talk about white supremacy and patriarchy in yoga spaces, and I talk about it in the church too. Often, it’s just conversations that I’m having in my head, at least right now, and occasionally in this space. But what I’m trying to say is years ago, when I had a come-to-Jesus moment sitting on a twin bed in an ashram in India, I asked God if helping white folks to reckon with their own whiteness was really, really the work I was meant to do. And she said yes. In fact she said, yes, girl, I already answered this question, you know what your work is. And now I find myself afraid to do it: afraid to step into a denomination that is largely white. I want to step into it because I appreciate its flat, democratic nature, although I dislike that that same nature can foster conservative, exclusionary values that center racism, control, and oppression over love and abundance. Point is, I’m choosing to try and practice life in ways that highlights the divisive, oppressive forces we operate in, so that we can tear them apart. This is difficult work. It feels particularly difficult for people of color, because we wind up dealing with emotional labor that isn’t ours. It’s a special kind of teacher we’re consenting to be. I don’t know if I want to do it. But I think it’s my work to do.

If the parish is always watching, if as a pastor I am always under the gaze of the community I’ve been entrusted with serving, what they think of me intersects directly with my ability to do my job, not just to draw my paycheck, but to execute my vocation as a servant-leader within the community. Suddenly, my black body isn’t as neutral as the other white bodies in the pews, and not just because my hair is different or because I don’t look like the people around me. Behind the wheel of her own car, at the truck stop or gas station, in the classroom, in the pulpit, in the studio, or in line behind you, White Reader, the black woman’s body has some kind of meaning. You don’t read her as neutral, even if you think you do. Nothing she does changes how you read her. No amount of education or manner or purity or propriety will save her from the judgment, or indeed, the retribution, in your gaze.

If the congregation is always watching, are we watching when Jesus is crucified? Are we going to police Jesus’ body? (Perhaps this is why in protestant churches there is no bleeding, six-pack, scantilly-clad Jesus, there is only the torture device on which he was killed. His body is simply too much for us to take in, and if a replica of it were present, we wouldn’t hear announcements about the church picnic or the elders’ meeting, we’d be too distracted and given to “stumble.”) Do I really thinking Jesus cared at all about anyone trying to shame him for his nakedness while he was dying? Because let’s be real, that loincloth we all see, we put that there. Like all of us, Jesus died as naked as the day he was born, and if we can’t hold the reality of that, we really do need to do some reckoning about what it is to be in a body. First Corinthians says that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. If we are policing bodies for purity or modesty, and ignoring their practice of connection, compassion, and of sacrifice, I think we’re missing the message.

So what do I do? What does it mean to teach, to serve, to abide and to listen, if I am trying to do so as a servant leader of God if on top of the complexity of that work, I have to navigate our racial (etc) identities and compensate for whatever one of us is projecting onto the other additionally? How do I make you less afraid of me, white stranger? How do I get you to hear me, fellow white parishioner? How do I hold space for you without abandoning myself, white teacher? And am I the one who’s doing all the work here?

This is a real fear. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t think it’s as simple as cherry-picking a different denomination. Body policing goes on in black churches and denominations, too, and to paraphrase Tolstoy, each conservative black congregation is conservative in its own way. I’ll acknowledge my vantage point about this is narrow, and maybe there’s something to learn or see about this that will broaden my horizons, and if it doesn’t remove my fear, at least it will teach me to walk with it. I have my eyes open. I’m not looking away.

Let’s see.

Yogi’s First Sermon: The Open Table

The first thing I did at HDS on the first day of school was receive the Eucharist. I was fresh-faced and excited, and had barely slept the day before, and woke up the Tuesday after Labor Day ready to go. On campus there’s a chapel that’s a part of the Div School called Divinity Chapel, or Emerson Chapel depending on who you’re talking to: a centuries-old room inscribed with plaques and stained glass. A lot of Harvard is old-money sheen and intellectual artifice and impostor syndrome; but this room is legit. It houses prayers and meditations and contemplation, rituals and tears, remembrances and rejoicing. It is a place where you recognize the river of legacy that you’re stepping into as a Harvard Divinity School student. It vibrates in the wood and the air of this space. The Eucharist was not only a great ritual to practice at the start of my career as a student there, it was an incredibly healing practice. I’d felt so far from being able to take communion. It’s a ritual with a lot of baggage, and it was one I was brought up believing that I wasn’t good enough to engage in: my heart has to be right, I have to be clean, without any outstanding issues or conflict. If my balance sheet isn’t at zero, I’m playing fast and loose with the ritual, some have said to me. On top of which, so few of the churches I’d attended had observed it on a regular, so I felt not only emotionally far from the practice, but also practically far from it. But the gluten-free wafer I dipped into the wine and affirmed put me into my body, a precious space when you consider that school puts us in our heads, so much so that our bodies suffer for it.

A window in Divinity Chapel.

I was grateful to be able to start my studies this way. As a yogi, the body is my way in. Physical practice is the key to spiritual experience and relationship for me. Sure, language is beautiful. I’m a writer, of course I love the poetry of prayer and scripture; but invite me to engage in a practice with my hands and feet, my limbs, my spine, my inhale and exhale, and I’m already halfway to God.

*

I have clear memories of the first church I attended with my parents as a little girl. It was a huge building, you know the way things are really big when you’re six or seven: there was green linoleum on the floor and forest green threadbare velvet lining the pews, and there were these massive organ pipes behind the dais. Above them there was a trompe l’oeil scroll painted high up on the cracked, plaster wall; on it was written in English Gothic letters, FAITH, WITHOUT WORKS, IS DEAD. JAMES 2:26.

Subtle, right? I would learn later about the Protestant connection between service to God and a strong work ethic; but as a girl I remember spending countless hours gazing at that wall and wondering how anybody got that high up to paint it.

So, one Sunday, I could tell something was happening because there was a kind of change in the energy up front. I peeked up and saw that the pastor was no longer behind the pulpit but was in front of the altar facing the congregation. He was standing behind a table tented with a white cloth, covering something, and he was flanked by black ladies in white dresses, tights, cardigans and white shoes: the nurse’s auxiliary, though I didn’t know what they were for, no one in church ever seemed particularly sick.

These women started passing out trays to pews, which would travel down a pew—hand to hand, to hand, and then back to the next pew and hand to hand, to hand. They were the same silver as collection plates, but they weren’t collection plates; they were different. When the plate was in the row in front of us, I peered around a suited arm and looked. Juice! Little cups of juice! Yes! When that plate came down my pew, I was ready, and when my mother took a cup and passed it to my father, I reached for it.

You know how sometimes mothers can gasp in a way that will not only let you know that you are In Trouble, but will also suck all the air out of a room? Anyhow, she made this sound, and it scared me, and I yanked my hand back. She lowered her mouth to my ear and whispered, “No, Jessica, you can’t have any!”

“Why not?” I started to say, but she shushed me, and the plate continued its journey away from us.

Two minutes later, when the plate of broken saltine crackers went by, I knew not to reach.

In the car on the way home, my mother used the word “communion” to describe what had happened during the service, and said that it was for adults only, because children didn’t—and couldn’t—understand what it meant. She didn’t tell me what it meant: she didn’t explain sacrament or worship, the last supper, arrest, or crucifixion, not even in terms that a six-year-old could understand. She only told me that I couldn’t understand its significance, so I couldn’t share.

I can’t take any credit for this. This is almost certainly not gluten free bread. 😉

When we have something special, we treat it as such, right? You don’t rake leaves or shovel snow in your Marc Jacobs or Tom Ford; you don’t lift weights in your fanciest gown or best suit. When a thing is special, we use the kid gloves and the light touch. We limit access to it. Jesus was special, and the people close to him knew it, and all his life, they put up fences around him. They limited access to him. Jesus is Sunday-finest, not suitable for everyday use. Or is He? Is Jesus only suitable for some of us, and only some of the time? Do we do right by Jesus, or by each other, when we don’t share him?

*

When he was 12, and his family went to Jerusalem, Jesus separated from his folks and stayed behind in Jerusalem after his family left the city. After looking for him for three days, they found him in the temple sitting with the teachers, talking, learning, asking and answering questions. Now, I’ve let go of my mother’s hand and wandered off in the grocery store, but to go missing in a different city for three days?

Mary confronted Jesus about this, beside herself with fear and anxiety. And what did Jesus do? He clapped back at her: “Why were you searching for me?”, he said, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”[1]

I wish I would come at my mother with attitude after going missing for three days.

But Jesus knew what his work was. Not even his mother would keep him from his business, from being with the people.

During his ministry, Jesus’ disciples had a similar attitude with folks who would come to him, for healing, for forgiveness, for wisdom, for connection: the disciples were like his agents. “Yes, we’re all happy Jesus is here today, No, he doesn’t have a lot of time, please have your prayer request ready, 30 seconds only, no exceptions, no touching, no pictures, no eye contact, thank you. Next!”

But what does Jesus say? About healing the Canaanite woman’s daughter: I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel[2]. To his disciples who are holding back children who’ve come for blessing: Let the little children come to me and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of Heaven belongs[3]. To Peter about the “sinful woman” who washed Jesus’ feet and massaged them with oil: You gave me no water, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she has anointed my feet with ointment[4]. Finally, to his students and disciples: whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple[5].

What is the cross that Jesus invites us to take up in pursuit of discipleship? It is an open table: unfettered access to the finest love, acceptance, nourishment, and generosity that is available. Jesus opened his borders. He tore down his fences. He used his body and his presence to give access to his love and nourishment. Through the Eucharist, Jesus bids us come into his presence and to be with his body. How does he do this? He gives us two actions: he breaks bread, he pours wine, he shares them, and says do this and remember me. This sacrament, this ritual, is one side of the blessing Jesus gives his followers before he is crucified. He also gives them a new commandment: love one another, he says, as I have loved you. On that fateful night, it was only a few of Jesus’ followers who were at the table with him. But Jesus knew then the connection between his bread as offering and his body as offering. He knew that to offer his bread and his body was to love his people; and this is what he asks us to do: to tear down the barriers to his table. To make him accessible to all.

Now, when I talk about opening the table, I don’t just mean practically. The table is where the work begins, not where it ends.

You are the open table.

The Eucharist is an embodied ritual: we use our voice to repeat language. We chew the bread; we feel the wine run down our throat. Our bodies get involved, whatever they are: more or less able, more or less aged, more or less free: we use our bodies to engage in a practice of God who came in a body. Some days, in the ritual, we might feel pious, or devoted, but some days we might be bored; we might be tired or distracted, fidgety or over-caffeinated, or angry or hurting. But we show up and we put our body on the line. We put our body in the shape and practice of the sacrament, and we trust the ritual and the touch of God to do their good work and have their way in us. Engaging our body this way, it invites us to pay attention. Jesus says, do this and remember me. Remembering is only the first part of our instruction. The real work in front of us as followers of Christ is to BE CHRIST in our world. We have to put our bodies on the line. Love one another, as I have loved you, Jesus says. We practice Communion not only to remember the sacrifice of Christ, but to be reminded to love as he loved. The power of this sacrament is that it is both a literal, embodied experience of Christ and a call to embody Christ for others. We are to show up, to put ourselves out there, to be the love, the generosity, the restoration and justice, the righteousness and the mercy, that Christ is for all of us.

If you are the open table, if you are the body of Christ to and for our community, are you putting your body on the line? Are you showing up, and I mean, really Showing Up, for those of us, for all of us, who need healing and nourishment from the body of Christ?

We Are the body of Christ. We must Be and Do Christ here, in our world, right now. What does that look like? Maybe we provide lead-free water for every child in every city; maybe we stop deforesting; maybe we deliver graduates from soul-crushing debt; maybe we provide addiction recovery instead of racist, punitive sentencing mandates; maybe we abolish prisons, and maybe we create and protect reproductive justice for all who want it; maybe we stop putting children in cages; maybe we reunite children and parents and we invest in communities.

Whatever it is, we make it. We give and receive the openness and welcoming, we offer and humbly seek from one another, the love and forgiveness that Christ personified so fully in his life and ministry. We take up the cross of presence: we love fully and fiercely. We put our bodies on the line. What obstacles have we created to the love of Christ? In what ways are we avoiding, or disobeying, his command to love one another? Who are we starving instead of feeding? From whom are we hoarding the sustaining love and grace of Christ? For us to be Christ, we must act, we must undo the obstacles of fear, defensiveness, of anxiety and oppression that we erect to being and showing the love and grace that Christ has shown us, and that he calls us to show everyone. Every One. By being Christ to one another, we don’t just create space and access to the sacrament of the Eucharist; we manifest and share the transformative power of the love of Christ. By embodying Christ, we tend to the body of Christ.

[1] Luke 2:49

[2] Matthew 15:24

[3] Matthew 19:14

[4] Luke 7:44-46

[5] Luke 14:27