I last celebrated Eucharist on April 1, for an early recording of Easter Sunday. I cried and my voice and hands shook. Three others received bread. I drank the wine alone. Our clergy, staff, and choir raced through all the Holy Week services in two days to beat the citywide shelter in place. What a terrible April Fools joke, weeping through the last days of Lent, performing Easter hope.
My older boy likes to play priest with his stuffies, a little wood clinging cross, plastic cup and plate from his play kitchen. He still hasn’t learned how to sit in a pew, but knows the chants from my worried weekends of practicing proper prefaces. It occurred to me, near the beginning, watching his longing for the real thing, that we could have church at home, sacrament right here. I’m a priest, after all, and have a gifted chalice and patten right there displayed on a shelf in our home office. If my kid wants communion, I could say the words, make a ritual. But what would that be without my parish?
Is this Eucharist?
I’ve been baking more: sourdoughs, yeasted breads, muffins, cookies, cakes, cobblers. The starter expands. The yeast bubbles. Why not double the batch? Try something new? How about pies and tarts? Time to finally master buttermilk biscuits. Even failed efforts of under and over proofing make the house smell wonderful. Neighbors up and down the street, colleagues, and friends passing through for socially distant porch conversations have all benefitted from the abundance. All four of us have new little bellies and curves to show for our effort. Bake and eat, these are our bodies.
There’s a rhythm of drinking without all those late meetings out: a few times a week, an evening glass with my partner. He likes a whiskey and I like wine, my legs curled under me as we sit with books and sketchpads in our blue porch rocking chairs, breathing, sweating, watching the fireflies as the sun goes down, relieved of our sons. At the end of each day, my thoughts are numb and my body is jello. Every program, lesson, and sermon requires its secondary and tertiary contingency plans. I’m weary of holding my worry and others. I’m still breastfeeding, baby-wearing, and wrestling the puppy on his leash, and by dinner time my back aches and energy plummets. Poured out.
A parishioner calls to ask if she can bring dinner. A card arrives in the mail. The empty lot down the street is full of blackberries and spearmint escapes its plot to creep across the yard. A friend drops off cinnamon rolls. “You were brave,” he says. “You should have some cinnamon rolls.”
Is this Eucharist?