I am reading with hunger Sara Miles' book take this breadhttp://saramiles.net/ and it's so gripping! She spoke at Greenbelt Festival last year 3 times and I got there twice and have ordered her talks.
In all the years I have been around the United Reformed Church I have never really heard anyone speak about their experiences, theology and conversion through communion in sharing bread and wine. It moves me and I wish I could hear more stories about it from far and wide - hint hint!
We've been experimenting with a variety of communions in Wythenshawe including recently about communion in solidarity with Gaza - breaking bread and eating it in the knowledge of hunger and broken bodies and lives in Gaza...and the other peoples we could name too.
I was at a Changemakers grassroots organising meeting in Manchester city centre 2 weeks ago and we were talking about our experiences of communion and its ritual place in worship and its every meal place spilling into the ritual place as it were. I like this two bowls theory of mixing it all up - memory, place, ritual and ordinary - this constitutes holy as I understand it - the incarnation and messing it all up together.
Between Easter and Pentecost at St. Marks we're going to share in communion weekly as church which is something we've not done before although it is a part of the URC story which is usual for some in Churches of Christ tradition. I hope this will nourish in us a hunger for more communion within and beyond ritualised communion - which in my view is only meaningful if we do break bread and share a cup with all sorts and get messed up together - this seems to be incarnational communion.
