Sunday meditation - ultimamente ...

Up, Down.

(Ai ai Senhor, eu quase não agüenta mais.)

A-and the BIG question today iiiis .... who is welcome and who is not?

List lifted from A Seating Chart for the Lord's Table (not recommended, extraneous pop-ups) & sorted alphabetically, & inclusion of k-k-k-Canada.

Baptist:
The bread and grape juice of Communion memorialize Christ's body and blood, and are a reminder of the Second Coming.

The Baptist churches have no official policy regarding who may receive Communion. Each individual church is autonomous and sets its own policy. Some churches restrict Communion to members of that specific church; some open Communion to any baptized Christian; some open it to anyone present. Some Southern Baptist churches limit Communion to baptized Southern Baptists. Most ministers place the decision about whether to receive Communion in the hearts and minds of those present.

The Baptist churches have no official policy regarding which non-Baptist churches its members may receive Communion in. Some ministers say that limiting Communion through such a policy would be contrary to Baptist belief in the "priesthood of the believer," which maintains that each Baptist is accountable directly to Christ.

Episcopal (maybe this includes Anglican, maybe not):
Nearly all Episcopalians believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine.

Communion is open to all baptized Christians.

Episcopalians may receive Communion in any church that welcomes them.

Lutheran - Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA):
ELCA members believe that, through Communion, they receive Christ's body and blood as assurance that God has forgiven their sins.

Communion is given to all baptized believers in Christ.

Receiving Communion in another church is a matter of conscience for ELCA members. The church's only policy about the matter is that ELCA members may receive Communion in any church whose tenets are congruent with their own.

Lutheran - Missouri Synod:
Synod members believe that, through Communion, they receive Christ's body and blood as assurance that God has forgiven their sins.

Communion is open to members of a church that has entered into an "altar and pulpit fellowship" with the Missouri Synod. This is also known as a "full communion fellowship." In North America, this includes the Lutheran Church-Canada and the Lutheran Synod of Mexico. Elsewhere, about two dozen churches have "altar and pulpit fellowships" with the Missouri Synod.

Members of the Missouri Synod may receive Communion only in denominations that have "altar and pulpit fellowships" with the Synod.

Methodist:
The bread and grape juice of Methodist Communion signify Christ's body and blood.

Has an "open table": anyone of any age who believes in Christ may receive Communion.

Methodists may receive Communion in any church that welcomes them.

Pentecostal Church of God:
Calls Communion the Lord's Supper. It is a memorial to Christ's death and resurrection.

Communion is open to all baptized Christians.

Members of the Church of God may receive Communion in any church that welcomes them, but only if grape juice--not wine--is served, since Church of God members abstain from alcohol.

Presbyterian:
Communion--wafers and grape juice or wine--is an "outward sign of an inward reality." It is a remembrance of Christ, not a transubstantiation of his body and blood.

Communion is open to all baptized Christians.

Presbyterians may receive Communion in any church where they are welcome.

Roman Catholic:
Through the transubstantiation of the Eucharistic bread and wine, Christ's body and blood are literally present for participants.

Communion is available to members of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Orthodox Churches, and the Polish National Church. Baptized Christians who do not belong to these churches may receive Catholic Communion only if they are gravely ill, do not have access to a minister of their own church, ask for Catholic Communion on their own initiative, and are "properly disposed" toward Catholic Eucharist.

Catholics in danger of death may receive the Eucharist from a minister of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Orthodox Churches, or the Polish National Church only if a Catholic minister is unavailable and if they request such Communion of their own volition.

United Church of Canada:

The Lord's Supper is the sacrament of communion with Christ and with His people, in which bread and wine are given and received in thankful remembrance of Him and His sacrifice on the Cross; and they who in faith receive the same do, after a spiritual manner, partake of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ to their comfort, nourishment and growth in grace.

All may be admitted to the Lord's supper who make a credible profession of their faith in the Lord Jesus and of obedience to His law.

United Church of Christ:
Communion celebrates "not only the memory of a meal that is past, but an actual meal with the risen Christ that is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet."

Each individual congregation determines its own policies. However, most follow the UCC Book of Worship, which says the Communion Table is "open to all Christians who wish to know the presence of Christ and to share in the community of God's people".

The UCC is in communion with the Disciples of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Reformed Church in America, and has ecumenical partnerships with several denominations, including the Methodist, Anglican and Baptist churches.

Sooo ... makes the Presbyterians look good for once eh?

Pretence has become such a large part - going about, always buying two sweets at the bakery, a pretence that has become a habit. Waiting for Easter and rebirth, waiting for September when school begins, waiting for the weekend when the kids will come and life will resume ...

Confusion, fundamental confusion ... Christ gave communion only to his disciples, and then later, in First Corinthians, is this, "Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body."

So, are all welcome or not? Unclear eh? Uncertainty, leading (through accidental and probably unrelated setbacks) to a profound feeling of unworthiness and abandonment ... forsaken 'default settings' entered via the logic of experience. "Your lonliness tells you you've sinned," says Leonard Cohen. "Good enough," says I, but then how to know what is sin and what is not?

Anhedonia (almost aphasia), melancholy (characterized by sullenness, ill-temper, brooding, causeless anger, and unsociability, and later by despondency and sadness, says the OED) and later still by whatever, eventually I guess.

A-and ... is forró just forrobodó (commotion) or is it maybe really (by a commodius vicus or recircularion) 'for all'?

A-and what about identity? Who the fuck could I possibly be? Less and less idea as time goes on, as relationships change into unfathomable mysteries, as my idea of 'the good' transmogrifies almost daily into stranger and stranger ... don't even know what to call them, configurations? images?

Blame, of course one would like to lay blame, shift the responsibility even partially - even justly or righteously one wonders? The interdiction based on an early inroad of secular notions into our imaginary?

Is that it? (Ai ai Senhor, venha, logo venha, eu quase não agüenta mais.)




Mais tarde ... virei para Chaka Khan e Rufus - Tell me Something Good - tambem náo agüentei, mas apenas passou o domingo, o domingo sim, mas não a solidão.




Youtube link #1, Youtube link #2.

You ain't got no kind of feeling inside
I got somethin' that'll sure enough set your stuff on fire
You refuse to put anything before your pride
What I got will knock all your pride aside

Tell me something good
Tell you that you love me yeah
Tell me something good
Tell me that you like it

Got no time is what you're known to say
I'll make you wish there was forty eight hours to each day
Your problem is you ain't been loved like you should
But what I got to give will sure enough do you good

Tell me something good
Thrill me, thrill me, thrill me
Tell you that you love me yeah
Tell me something good
Oh baby babe baby yeah
Thrill me, thrill me, thrill me
Tell me that you like it

You ain't got no kind of feeling inside
I got somethin' that'll sure enough set your stuff on fire
You refuse to put anything before your pride
What I got will knock your pride aside

Tell me something good

See also: Counterpoint, sort'a.





and finally, a footnote ... what I wrote at United Online:

for any of you who have read Watermelon Sugar, Brautigan, tonight i am feeling a bit like the character Inboil in that story when he says "no, no, waidaminit, that's not ideath, this is ideath!" and then begins cutting himself into pieces with a razor - you are not going to understand, no good at all if you haven't actually read the thing, no idea where you might get a copy these days though... ebay maybe ...

but what got me started tonight was not Richard Brautigan, i was thinking of communion, it has been on my mind lately, i will tell you why in a minute, and then i was imagining some more-or-less carnal love in the symmetry of communion ("Father! Why do these words sound so nasty?" :-) and then i was remembering Cohen and his, "Every heart to love will come, but like a refugee." ... powerful line, some truth in it for those who've had to learn how powerless love really turns out to be :-) powerless in the world's sense of power anyway eh? "But you will
wind up peeking through her keyhole down upon your knees."

so what about this communion thang eh? what is it exactly? let's cut to the chase and ask - is it important? and if so, just how important is it? important to die for? or, reversing the notion, will you die if you don't get it?

that this kind of question is not asked very much in your churches is telling, not in my experience anyway ... this question skips a few of your common assumptions eh? tell me it ain't so folks, puh-leeze! say what? not in your 2008 edition social imaginary? izzat it?

still and all - i remember listening to a sermon one time by someone ... can't remember just who, saying that even if he were in some far off and foreign land he would be welcome at at least one table - the communion table, but this, of course, turns out not to be generally true either, there is lots of superstition and daemonism in churches everywhere, rank sociology (paleo-Durkheimian) rearing its ugly head and all 'a that

Roman Catholics, for example, have quite recently declared, through their infallible Papa, that their table is the only real one, I stood in line a few times here wanting to put the question to the officiating Priest, but never managed to get it out (and see what his personal view on it might be, or even if he had a personal view at all) so i continue in the dark, but meanwhile ... i find myself unable to take communion at his table, a typically Canadian sensibility isn't it? not wanting to partake where you are not explicitly welcomed?

my mother was a simple country girl from back-woods Ontario, Huntsville, soon to be host to the G8 ... her take on love-making in marriage was typically straightforward, viz. if it ain't happnin' then what about the love? this question coming at me from a 65 year old just a few weeks after my father's prostate surgery made me laugh as you may be able to imagine, i think i managed to straighten her out, and yet my take on communion is not so different

yes, some essential part of you dies for the lack of it

(yes, 'essential,' that is what i said 'essential,' it means you can not do without it y'see ...)

in a remarkable book by a white South African, A Day In The Life Of Michael K., wazzizname ... ah yes, John Coetzee, describes the gradual reduction to zero, the increasing impossibility of an integrated reality for a black man, Michael, until in the end, Michael finds himself lowering a bent spoon into a well-head on a bit of string to bring up water for his garden, one spoonful at a time, hummm, i seem to have mis-remembered the name of it, Wikipedia tells me it is The Life & Times of Michael K. ... oh well ... pumpkins! it was pumpkins he was growing!

Coetzee eventually left South Africa, went to Australia, i left k-k-Canada and came to Brasil, some parallels no doubt, and of course you do so remain a stranger in a strange land even when you have achieved some ability with the language, he married an Australian i thinks, made a somewhat better arrangement for himself than i have managed maybe, who can say?

and y'all my Christian sisters and brothers? is this space not a communion table too? is that not what we are up to here? and if not that, then what?

a-and now for (what might seem at first blush) a complete non-sequitur (and commodius vicus back to carnal Howth Castle and environs), how about Chaka Kahn and Rufus, d'you remember this ol' fave-o-rite?

You ain't got no kind of feeling inside
I got somethin' that'll sure enough set your stuff on fire
You refuse to put anything before your pride
What I got will knock all your pride aside

Tell me something good
Tell you that you love me yeah
Tell me something good
Tell me that you like it

Got no time is what you're known to say
I'll make you wish there was forty eight hours to each day
Your problem is you ain't been loved like you should
But what I got to give will sure enough do you good

Tell me something good
Thrill me, thrill me, thrill me
Tell you that you love me yeah
Tell me something good
Oh baby babe baby yeah
Thrill me, thrill me, thrill me
Tell me that you like it

You ain't got no kind of feeling inside
I got somethin' that'll sure enough set your stuff on fire
You refuse to put anything before your pride
What I got will knock your pride aside

Tell me something good



not to worry, eventually, human nature being what it is, i will get tired and just go away, you won't have to be stepping around me forever, this too shall end (a-and just what is this bum doing in our nave? with a bent teaspoon and a ball of string? :-)

be well.

Down.