taize reflection part II (more crying - i am such a WUSS)

journal 22.01.2006 Taizé 11:45

perhaps the most beautiful thing i have ever seen.

today in the morning celebration of the Eucharist i was kind of crouched on the ground not knowing if i should sit all the way back down or what while others were receiving communion. There was some commotion behind me and to my right, where two brothers of taizé were distributing the sacrament. A small girl from town, about 8 years old, was standing between them holding a candle. The commotion had been caused by the boy receiving. He and 3 others are part of a French group of severly mentally and physically handicapped people who have been here since thursday night. they have lent a unique quality to common prayer times, as they often cry out or make noises, trying to communicate, to make their presence felt. or maybe they just do that. i don't know.

when i turned around to look, the action had already happened, and it looked as if the brother had placed the wafer in the boy's mouth, and in attempting to chew it, it had fallen out onto the ground. what i witnessed was the confused moment in which the brothers looked at each other and at the volunteer holding the boy, trying to figure out what to do. another volunteer came around awkwardly from behind (causing even more commotion as several of these in line were in wheelchairs) and picked up the host off of the floor and held it in his palms reverently.

then everyone just stood there for a moment. all of this was sort of obscured in my sight, so maybe the woman who was literally holding this boy upright was simply preparing to move him back to their place. but in that moment of stillness, i saw how the brother who had administered this lost host was looking at this boy. i'm sure that as a Eucharistic minister he was aware of the incredible sacrality of the consecrated host, and the myriad of technicalities that might be required of him to somehow atone for this profanation, but if any of that crossed his mind in that instant, he seemed totally unconcerned about it. in the moment i focused on his face, he was simply pouring out onto this boy a patient and overflowing love that knew nothing of regulations or restrictions, of purity or some sort of externally defined holiness. it was simply the human manifestation of the love symbolized in the body of Christ he was offering.

i was completely overcome in this moment - i feel so often like this boy - unable to move myself without another bearing almost all my weight, crying out into a sacred silence with nonsensical sounds that don't communicate anything, and when i'm allowed to participate in the most sacred of symbolic rites, i somehow manage to screw it up. the odd and unexpected realization of this week has been the power of paul's idea that God loved us 'while we were still sinners.' I haven't by anymeans become preoccupied with sin, and no guilt has been instilled or renewed in me. but i have been so moved by this idea that God's completeness, God's wholeness does not reject our brokenness, does not demand anything at all from us - any purification, any prerequisite understanding. God says yes to us in our human frailty, tempermentality, and even in the cruelty we show to those who preach only the radical extremes of inclusion and love.

and the other complementary realization and charge of this week has been that, like that brother, we must be the face of God's yes to others, to all others in the world. we must say yes, even to the last consequence to our brothers and sisters in brokenness.