2013.03.31 Eastering

Easter for clergy is exhausting, even if you’re only assisting. I’m the good kind of tired, the kind that comes from a fine meal in good company with lots of laughter and children’s faces, the kind that satisfies.  

In our  parish, when small children come to the altar rail to receive their share of the Holy Communion bread, which is a flat white tasteless wafer, they run or skip. Their parents grab them by whatever is grabbable to hold them back, to make them wait, corral their eager energy.  But the children know better.  They know when something is special and they know that they belong. So they run up, hop onto the kneeler, prop their small elbows onto the rail and stick out their hands—right palm over left, as they’ve been taught. Some kids curl their fingers into tiny tight cups. They try to get the formation just right.  

The priest comes by to give them their “treat.” When I am the priest, I look into their turned up faces and bend down a bit to their level to place, sometimes wedge, a wafer into each pair of cupped hands as I say their name, or my sister or brother,  “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”

Then they pop it into their mouth or take a bite and discover again that it tastes yukky.  Still, they know that it’s important and that everyone is eating it with them, all together the same. Small faces register like and dislike —yes and no at once. There’s no faking here. Kids are truth.

Is it okay to say yes and no at once to Godde? Even okay to say yes, but—sometimes?

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

and she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

and she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish 

and she said honey

she calls me that sometimes

she said you can do just exactly

what you want to

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don't paragraph 

my letters

Sweetcakes God said 

who knows where she picked that up

what I'm telling you is

Yes Yes Yes
                                    “God Says Yes To Me” by Kaylin Haught from The Palm of Your Hand, 1995