Dear Church Family –
With so much distressing news and events of late, I am wondering how you are attempting to stay grounded and connected. Not to the internet and the 24/7 cycle of stories, but with one another and to those you love, to the bounty and beauty of the late spring here in the San Francisco Bay area. When is the last time you felt cool grass or warm sand under your bare feet, or smiled at birdsong, a beautiful sunset, or a blooming flower? The taste of raspberries now in season?
We might feel powerless sometimes at circumstances that seem far outside of our control—be it the tragic consequences of war and conflict far away, or the erosion of rights and laws closer to home. More than ever, we need to find solace in one another’s company – for we are truly not alone – and to tend to this gift of our bodies, our capacity to perceive the spiritual in the natural world through our eyes, noses, ears, and skin. As I child I grew up singing a hymn adapted from Psalm 133: “Behold! How good, and how pleasant it is, for brethren to dwell together, in unity!”
The Psalms also tell us that we are to “taste, and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him” (from Psalm 34); I have always loved how the sense of taste here is linked to perceiving – “seeing” — the goodness of the Divine. When was the last time you tasted, and felt God’s love?
It is communion Sunday, this upcoming first day of the month, and we have a chance to be together in a moment of collective tasting that connects us to Christians past, present, and future. When we ingest the unleavened bread and fruit of the vine, it can be a true moment of “Kairos” time, if we allow it – a flowing moment of divine presence where the generations behind us, who also participated in this deeply symbolic ritual, become palpable: parents, ancestors, and angelic hosts beyond.
When I was in the Holy Lands in the spring of 2023, our small group of pilgriming Swedenborgians got to experience a special communion at a site (one of several) rumored to be the burial tomb of Jesus. Located outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem (in the occupied West Bank), in a largely Muslim Palestinian neighborhood, we took the bread and wine in the cool night. The air was thick with the beautiful chanted Arabic adhan from nearby mosque minarets, the evening call to prayers; a practice as ancient and resonant as the Christian ritual of communion. It was a fragile, complex moment, where our small tasting (and seeing) of the Lord was woven with the deep, religious timbre of a contemporary Muslim community under great duress and threat; a community that did not have our freedom of mobility with our American and European passports and visas. I thought then of Psalm 133 in a new way, how it resonates with a deep longing – “for brethren to dwell together.”
May the month of June allow us to practice peace-making, which comes from our grounding in care, community, and the bounty of creation.
Rev. Dr. Devin Zuber