dangerous, like communion

Pr. Hoffman is always on about the life-giving choice. He isn't talking about abortion or euthanasia. He is talking about choosing kind words, safe speed limits, exegetical method, salad, controlling affect, vacation plans, organic strawberries.

I can follow him, mostly.

I get a little stuck on Eucharist because Holy Communion happens every Sunday and we don't get a choice about that--even if or when it seems like we might. What is more, communion happens every moment, every hour, every day every week for us.
So every week we have the choice about whether or not to drag ourselves up to the altar.

It is just one more example of the way the life-giving choice happens to you, you turn around and feel like you never really made it, it made you.

so I'm working it out, hoping the poems will explain it to me:

I love you so much
The blood will always be there
soaking in around and through us, the everyday every day, and sometimes in the sweaty brow of your midnight body twisted in bedsheets,
like in a dream:; :; :;
one thought connects to another without making any real sense, but this is not a dream;
It is a restful choice, for body and blood
like a ribbon unfurling,
from some one body to another,
chalice to lips and then out again, when we whisper the words we know will cost
us, everything:
--I love you so much--
in honesty and hope
this is only a wasted moment,
a fantasy, or harmful
if we disconnect from all that we have learned--:
about choices.
Sometimes we make a choice.
Sometimes a choice makes us
Because it is
who we are, who we want to be, who we were made to be,
called to be: among the living.
if you ever doubt heaven exists let it be
because I am not there,
I am here with you
always.

so here, watch this sad little video for someday you will be loved. it may make your stomach hurt.

I once knew a girl
In the years of my youth
With eyes like the summer
All beauty and truth
In the morning I fled
Left a note and it read
Someday you will be loved.

I cannot pretend that I felt any regret
Cause each broken heart will eventually mend
As the blood runs red down the needle and thread
Someday you will be loved

You'll be loved you'll be loved
Like you never have known
The memories of me
Will seem more like bad dreams
Just a series of blurs
Like I never occurred
Someday you will be loved

You may feel alone when you're falling asleep
And everytime tears roll down your cheeks
But I know your heart belongs to someone you've yet to meet
Someday you will be loved

You'll be loved you'll be loved
Like you never have known
The memories of me
Will seem more like bad dreams
Just a series of blurs
Like I never occurred
Someday you will be loved