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Not-so-quiet Desperation

FROM
Break Out: Finding Freedom
When You Don't Quite Fit The Mold
James R. Hasse

Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.

Alexander Pope

It poured like wine. It looked like wine. And, it stained the sleeve of my suit coat like wine. But, it was my first communion in a Methodist church, and, even though I knew better, I was not prepared for the surprise I felt when I tasted it. It turned out to be grape juice.

To my Lutheran taste buds, it was like taking the first bite out of a Mounds candy bar, missing the mark and chomping, instead, on the cardboard insert below the bar.

I choked back an involuntary snicker at my surprise, pretending to have a deceptively decent cough which I politely covered by placing the slightly bent forefinger of my right hand against my mouth.

But, Pam, my fiancée, was standing next to me. She caught my eye, and we both knew we were on the verge of slipping down a spiral of illogical thought that could result in an outright burst of inappropriate laughter – a vulnerability I always need to guard against as a person without fine-tuned control over involuntary responses.

I tried logic to get out of my laughing mode. After all, this was her church. I didn't know communion was going to be served at the pew, and there was no convenient way not to participate – an option I usually chose in visiting a church for the first time.

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