Let me tell you about Holy Communion at St. Giles..

My alarm clock wakes me around 7.37am, Communion is at 8, I don't need that long to get there, but I need that long to get there in time to experience the deep silence and grand space of the place 15 minutes prior to the sharing of the elements. I wake up and my flesh, damn it, tells me I want to sleep. I say, "No I don't," it says, "Yes you do." Then I look at it with a hard cold look and swing my legs out of bed. I wiggle into my pants, put on shoes but no socks, drape my coat over my shoulders and flee to the eucharist. Sometimes, when I'm lucky, I meet the man walking his two short-legged, puffy-bellied dogs as the city starts waking up with a pink tint up against the stone fo the buildings. The minister sits on a bench just inside the doors to guide us God-hungry (or at least God-curious) individuals to the little cubby of a chapel tucked against the north side of the church. Then we sit, one two or three of us - eventually four, seldom five - in that deep silence and grand space of the place until the bells toll. After the bells I hear the squeak squeak and clunk clunk of the steps carrying the man who is carrying the elements to us - bread wrapped up in a cloth like the mystery that it is and wine in the sliver goblet with little dents, the goblet that reflects the hands that carry it, the black and white tile of the floor, the thirsty lips that approach it with care.
The squeaks and the clunks make my heart skip, like the whistle at the start of the game - only more sacred.
The minister places the elements before us, then sits with us, usually right next to me, making our four count five or our seldom five, six. Quiet. He reads a psalm with words and voice and accent that hangs and flows like the white robe he's adorned in. It's my native tongue and it's a foreign language all at once. It's music in cognito. He reads more, from the gospels sometimes, from the letters others. And calls Jesus names, beautiful names. Then his prayer - not a written prayer, but polished and crafted with careful thought and poignant phrases - each time a bit different, each time more or less the same: "Feed us that we may feed others." He approaches the symbols of flesh and blood and turns to face us. Then back and forth we climb our way through the liturgy like the switch backs of a steep ascent. "Give thanks to the Lord," he says. We say, "It is meet and right so to do." And other words, back and forth. "Lord Jesus Christ..have mercy upon us. Lord Jesus Christ..have mercy upon us. Lord Jesus Christ.." And just when we're ready to plead for mercy a third and final time something shifts - a sudden boldness, a sudden desperation, or just because it's written this way in the lectionary - who knows - but for some reason we finish with the wild request, "..grant us thy peace." And most of us believe it is possible, the rest of us go through with it hoping that it might be. The elements blessed, committed - the minister nibbles and sips then brings them to us. The man on my left absorbs the elements with haste, as if the mercy and peace we've been speaking of, believing in, hoping for may escape if he takes too long. The woman on my right, the one whose face has been glowing the whole time as if Jesus was there holding her hand and telling her secrets, chews the bread pensively and sips the wine cautiously not wanting to arrive on the other side of this experience. I love how dry the bread is in my mouth. I love how the cup covers my whole face when I tip it up to receive the drink offered to me. Then we all shake hands - like at the end of the game, only more sacred - briefly breaching the barrier of island-existence and in so doing passing a hint or two of the previously mentioned peace with a moment of touch and a shared smile. We don't sit down until the minister speaks a good word over us and leaves with the leftovers. After that we can stay as long as we need to - long enough to let it all setlle in, long enought to wonder at what it is that just happened during that handful of moments between one deep silence and the next there in the grand, sacred space of the place.
Once I stayed long enough to be the last one, long enough to be the one to blow out the candles as I walked back toward the door and the world waking up, as I walked back there all nourished in my soul.