Just got back from a footwashing-and-Eucharistic-supper service for Maundy Thursday. Played the guitar. Spent supper sitting next to an elderly woman whose cup I had to lift to her lips for her whenever she wanted to drink because she didn't have enough motor control to handle it without risking a spill, though she was able to shakily handle a fork. I found her very difficult to understand when she spoke; but once I was able to make something out, my impression was that she was lucid and intelligent, perfectly aware of what was happening around her—able, for example, to follow the conversation I was having about my dissertation with the person seated on the other side of her—just trapped in a body that she could no longer use well. That must be maddening, especially when the first worst impulse of people like myself is to treat her like a child.
The layperson who gave the sermon tonight spoke about how Jesus loves us with our ugliest, or even just our most annoying, traits, and that we experience that love in a community that embraces us on similar terms.
There was this strangely, unexpectedly moving moment at the end of the service. The priest was reading the post-communion prayer, which normally the congregation would recite together, except at this service we didn't have prayer books, so the priest was reading it by herself. But little by little people started to chime in, and by the end pretty much the entire congregation was reciting the prayer from memory. I'm not sure how to articulate why that moved me so much. It was like I was watching this community discover that they shared this common knowledge, this common way of relating to God. I felt like I was watching this community come to consciousness—or maybe just I was coming to consciousness—of one dimension of their community-ness, their communion with one another. I'm not communicating well what I felt.
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They should look forward with one eye,
having one faith and one baptism,
having their hearts knit together
in unity and in love one towards another.
(Mosiah 18:21)
As I have loved you,
so you also are commanded to love one another.
(John 13:34)
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