While we foster deep communion and our inner selves
reveal.
---Larry E. Schultz, 2004
The starting blocks. The finish line. The beginning and the
end. In the life of faith, communion serves both as birthing moment and
gathering-in, as jumping-off and destination.
When our faith is new, and we are building our muscles of
believing and living the life of love to which we have been called, the table
provides communal strength and model for our growth. The saints with whom we
share the love feast are there to hold our hands during our first tentative
steps, to dust us off and brush away our tears after our falls and false
starts. As our faith matures, as hopefully it will, we combine drawing strength
from the communion of saints with offering our own to those who walk beside
and follow after us ---
encouraging, guiding, offering grace, nurturing growth --- always finishing the
course where it began, at the table of love.
For this table, for this feast, to nourish us as it could,
for its communion to be true and deep, each place must be set as a safe place
for the nakedness of honesty to rest, a place where we dare to reveal who we
really are to each other. Where we seek to know each other in all our
complexity. We must trust each other that much around the table…and being
known, and knowing, must matter that much.
That table, everyday saints. Start to finish. Your place is
saved. Come home.
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