At the beginning of November, I had a major milestone in my life: I broke my first bone. While the venue for the first breakage was valiant and worthy (the ultimate frisbee field) the actual events that transpired weren't (I missed the frisbee and put my left hand down to break my fall).
It's a small fracture, so I'm basically wearing a glorified splint until I go in for follow-up x-rays this Thursday. Totally stinks. My first break and I don't even get a cool cast for people to sign like all the kids got to do back in the day. And on top of that, I'm no longer in the club--I used to mock sissies like me who had broken bones. Now I'm one of the sissies.
One of the things that I'm really enjoying about our church/the more liturgical service is that we do communion every week. Even in the weeks where I struggle to engage with the readings (as I did yesterday), communion almost always speaks to me in a unique way. We go up to the front to receive the elements: bread and then wine or juice that we either drink from the common cup or dip the bread into.
You can tell I'm a rookie, I'm definitely a dipper. Germs dude.
It's been powerful for me over the past couple weeks has been to walk up front to receive the bread with a broken hand. Here's the "bread of life" being received by an imperfect, broken appendage.
It reminds me what communion's all about: a feast not for the perfect but for the broken. Life is offered to me not because I'm so polished or together but precisely the opposite: because I'm largely a disaster. Some weeks I feel more disastrous than others, but regardless the truth of the matter is that I need something (or Someone) outside of myself to intersect my life or else I'm stuck...stuck with a permanently broken life, as symbolized by this broken wrist.
So if you're still in the "no broken bones" club, you're totally missing out.
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