Amanda Mather
Revelations
At the house party we are talking about conversation starters and land on a good one: If you were the Jesus figure of some religion of your making, how would the devoted take communion in your church? It takes me two tries to parse this question before realizing I’m to pick a little snack and a sip of something meaningful. The game is to announce, on my turn, the blood and the body of me. Once this penetrates, I love the question immediately for how revealing it is.
It reveals, firstly, which of us grew up in a Christian tradition and which of us were spared. Samantha and I both need the question repeated, and Hannah needs someone to explain communion before she asks if brisket wouldn’t be too sacrilegious. It reveals next how benevolent a god you’d be. Wrathful Kaitlyn would have you take a Cheeto soaked in Red Bull just because she could. Peter would give you sour gummy candy and cold brew coffee and wish you peace. Maia would prefer your communion be truly that, and so she would personally dole out a forkful of a rotating seasonal pasta dish and a sip of hot toddy whatever the weather. I, people-pleaser even in my imagined divinity, go with two-thirds of an ElFudge sandwich cookie (the bottom wafer and the turd-shaped, machine-piped layer of chocolate creme) served open-faced with a sip of coffee (black if you must, but ideally made mild with a splash of chocolate milk, lactose free), because cookies and coffee go well together, are easy to administer and easy to take, are pleasant and might make you laugh. And I like them.
The question also reveals, I think, a tolerance for revelation. It is possible to answer it, as I have, with a funny lie, but even that is telling, suggests a fear of being seen. I know whimsical cookies and coffee would not put us in communion, not really. The ElFudge faithful would know me no better than their detractors, would not know my benevolence from my love. My fault, I know. It’s impossible to adore me with what I’ve consecrated just to please you. I know, and yet.
A holy secret: in my church communion hurts. My body is a Pull n’ Peel Twizzler as fresh as you can get it (only the damned eat stale Twizzlers), eaten bite by bite with your back teeth as if you are tearing the end off a cigar in an old cartoon; chewed ruefully so you can feel the gummy candy resist like rare meat, like flesh; savored despite its flavor – cherry cough syrup cardboard – to exalt the pleasant ache of jaws made to do what they were made to do. My blood is a swig of Tangerine La Croix taken like you are dying of dehydration, a swallow so large the bubbles join in your throat and resist the downward progress of the liquid so that for a flash you worry your eagerness to cure your thirst has lead you to drown yourself and now you will die ironically, tragically in the Greek sense, unable to ameliorate any kind of want without consequence; and when that flash ends and you choke down the carbonation, still thirsty but alive, you are grateful, rapturous, that you can feel your throat sting.
Amanda Mather is a writer and researcher living in Portland, Oregon. She writes a lot and publishes less.
