Body Of

Why did a robin, hopping across the river path, suddenly bring to my mind the phrase body of Christ ?

Walking, I'd been thinking of how the mind throws up an endless stream of garbage. Today, my trash stream had a soundtrack -- a James Taylor tune, running in an endless loop in the background:

Millwork ain't easy, millwork ain't hard/ Millwork ain't nothin' but an awful boring job

even as my mind offered pithy and irritable judgments on the panting, sweating joggers thudding past.

Was the redbreast's body of Christ worth notice ? The metaphor (I thought) body of Christ is worthless if the collective -- the substance/phenomena -- it describes does not include that robin. I thought of communion, and transubstantiation. The enormous edifice of the Catholic Church does not exist to perpetuate a metaphor. Ghostly transcendencies elude me. How does it work, exactly ? God, Jesus, the Pope, a priest -- something is authorized and is transmitted. Membership. Like a blood brother ritual ? Something that has a particular reality, actuality. The wafer isthe body of Christ. It seems like a fetishistic notion. The wafer is Jesus, and Jesus alone. Not Godhead-in-All-Matter. Just Jesus.



The UCC, speaking of Jesus, has fully embraced gay marriage. It would seem the only Christian thing to do, a theological no-brainer. But it did not take long for the acts of fundamentalist hatred and violence to begin. (Chuck Currie, via Buzzflash) I have no patience with theological homophobia. I simply cannot bring myself to respect the opinion of those who propound it. It is an execrable opinion, unworthy of respect, unworthy of enshrining in articles of faith. I'm glad the denomination to which I nominally belong has an open door and an open heart -- if I, as unlikely as it may seem, were ever to decide to come in from the cold.