My First Tattoo!

(This is the fourth and final pre-scheduled post. It was just pictures until yesterday, when I decided to actually explain the tattoo, so in that sense it's also a current entry. Boo-ya.)

Way back in August I spent a fun-filled evening with friends getting permanently marked with ink and needles. It was my first tattoo and really didn't hurt all that much, although it wasn't exactly pleasant. I absolutely love how it turned out.

G was the official photographer, a job she did while wearing her infant daughter and after having driven two hours just to be with me for this special occasion. T's whole family altered their evening plans just to give me moral support. These two are my GIRLS.


Photographic evidence:


Wait, sir, I'm not so sure I...


And...this is happening.


T observes the artistry


Tres belle.

So why did I choose this particular phrase? It's taken from here:

"Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God." Ephesians 5:1-2

This is one of several Offertory Sentences the priest may recite immediately prior to the passing of the alms basins. During a more cynical time in my life I viewed this moment as a grasping, materialistic gateway through which we had to pass before being allowed to take communion. I hated hearing it, and loved my hating of it. It was a routine and repeating way to feel righteously indignant, a reaction as immature as it was ridiculous. To be honest, I make myself sad by remembering all of this. Was I not listening to the words?

What can be more beautiful than walking in-- living in-- love? You can be "spiritual but not religious" or a Religious Scientist (DUDE--just found out about those guys) or a raccoon and still get behind that notion.

Secondly, if we are Christ's body in the world and the Church is the community charged with doing Christ's work, and if I believe in and love the mission of the Church even as I embrace its imperfections, then I need to be willing to support that mission. If we're to let our light so shine before men that they see our good works and glorify our Father which is in heaven (more or less Matthew 5:16), then somebody has to buy the lightbulbs, capiche?

And so this moment, then-- the recitation of these words-- has become one of my favorite parts of the service. At the end of church we're charged to "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord," but these verses from Ephesians mark an actual mini service opportunity right within worship itself. I can make the choice to give but a part of what I have in that moment and reflect, in an infinitesimally smaller but undeniably connected way, the totality of the offering in Jesus's body and blood.

I have the chance to do that every single Sunday, and it's not an obligation. It's an honor.

Walk in love.