Chalice Error

I am the first to admit when I make a mistake. Unfortunately, I am also the second, the third, the fourth, the fifteenth, and the three-hundred and forty ninth.

Mistakes that I make live on for a while. They marinate and become oral legend. They star in off-Off Broadway musical revues and write tell-all memoirs revealing their stints in rehab and other plot points cribbed from VH1's "Where are They Now?" They become Internet memes. They're on reality shows. When the zombie apocalypse strikes and we're all reduced to living in sewers and eating shoe inserts, little will remain of our culture except tales of my screw-ups. Pandora will open the box and evict Hope, to much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I guess at this point I should confess to having microwaved the children, but really all I did was have an off-day at the altar rail. That's got to be pretty much the best place in the world to make a mistake, since it'll just kind of slide off and evaporate in all that lovely forgiveness and redemption.

And yet, inside my head, it was like the puking scene in Stand By Me: compound and unstoppable.


Do not click on this. Seriously DO NOT. It's cataclysmic.

I was a chalice bearer today, and while it was only my fourth time, it's a pretty basic operation: vest up, process in behind the choir, sit down, and then offer the cup at communion. It's simple, it's meaningful, and I love doing it. Best of all, it used to seem like this hallowed space removed from both time and the possibility of fouling things up. Each previous effort was marked by one minor but memorable misstep: the first time, I hit someone in the teeth. The second time, I forgot to say "The Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation" to a friend of mine. The third time was practically perfect, although I think I might have held the cup too high for intincting a couple of times (which is dipping the wafer rather than just drinking from the cup).

Today it was crazy. It was Amateur Hour at the Apollo; it was monkeys escaped from the zoo; it was a belly flop on an Olympic dive. I just couldn't get the rhythm down-- I would go too fast, then too slow. I completely lost all my mojo with the purificator, which is the little cloth you use to clean the rim after each person sips. It's cardinal law (and very simple) that you wipe, turn the chalice a quarter turn, go on to the next person.

People, I forgot to wipe. At least three or four times. And then I would remember it, only I'd be in the middle of an intinction, but I'd still wipe and turn in apologetic and completely nonsensical memory of the person for whom I didn't. Which would throw me off for the next few people. Instead of gracefully guiding the chalice up to their lips and fading into the background as the sacrament did its work, I would screech in and kind of throw it at them as they recoiled in horror. It was like a carnival side show up there, and it just kept happening.

AND THEN. Oh, and then, good people of God, my little family came up to the altar rail and Silas was waving and Eva was jumping around and stage whispering "I LOVE YOU, MOMMY!" and I got so involved in watching them that I FORGOT SOMEONE. Just...forgot him, like he wasn't even there. It was a poor gentleman stranded in the middle of the altar rail, and he just knelt and knelt there looking more and more chagrined while people broke ranks around him, no doubt thinking he was hanging out up there in misery confessing a litany of sins, when really he was just WAITING ON ME to give him the cup, already. Which I did, after a gentle nudge from the priest.

And then I died, and went straight to Purgatory, which as it turns out does exist and is a giant Internet Cafe where I was able to drink some really crappy coffee and log in to my blog.

It was nice knowing you.


Sigh.

All right.

Okay....in all seriousness? It maybe wasn't quite that bad. I did an acceptable job with most of the people, and a few even smiled at me, completely unaware of the catastrophe unfolding mere inches from their noses. I'll wager at least 99% of them continued to be engaged in the service and said the post-communion prayer and sang the closing hymn with nary a thought of the sweaty chick holding up the chalice. It was only my fourth time, and reality was bound to impinge on the holy at some point.

Still--it's hard to take part in a service so lovingly offered and constructed by professionals, both lay and ordained, and not have it be a personal best each time. Furthermore, sitting in the pews makes each service a sort of sanctified island into which you relax and breathe and anchor the rest of your week. It turns out that participating in the active creation of such an experience can demystify a thing or two.

I'm fully cognizant of the fact that, despite what Jesus says in Mark 5:48, human perfection does not exist on this side of the mortal coil. The notion is an oxymoron when held in conjunction with the Eucharist, which is the very reenactment of Jesus' sacrifice for our gravest imperfections. Still-- He died for our sins, not our honest mistakes. I probably need to remember that.

In the very least, when all was said and done, I hope that Jesus was laughing at me. It is kind of funny. He just needs to keep it up until I can laugh at myself.