Bread and Balance

We gathered today in a chapel of welcome to hear a word of hope. We sang the songs and the words echoed with strength, comfort, and call. Standing and sitting and showing up in gratitude.

The room welcomed my presence as it existed.
It took my pain, my stumble, my ache, and my hope.
It gave its power and promise.
It wrapped and unraveled my questions at the same time—like God does. Like grace does. Like a place can.

Unity is not sameness.

We gathered today in a chapel of welcome. The word reached my heart, the songs reached my soul. The room gathered me in tenderness and named me as claimed. It called me to be. It saw me as me.

And then it asked me to blend.

It asked me to participate the way participation is usually imagined—bodies in motion, bodies in lines, bodies that can “just” stand and shift and wait. Communion was offered and it was mine, and it was also out of reach.

I sat in the chair because the line steals my balance. I sat in the chair knowing I was held, knowing his body was broken for me—
and in that knowing, I broke.

The tears fell.
And the loss was deep and unexpected.

I hurt. I really hurt.
Not metaphor hurt. Not “ouch, that’s hard” hurt.
Stab-in-the-middle-of-worship hurt.

And the tears weren’t only about logistics. They weren’t only about access.

The tears were longing.

A desperate need for the Spirit.
A fierce hunger for the connection that happens in communion.
An absolute need for Christ.

The tears were for all of those who sit and cannot get to the table. For the ones who are thirsting and starving for what is at the table, and it isn’t reachable—not because they don’t want it, but because the path assumes a kind of steadiness they don’t have.

Part of me wanted to cry out—not for me, but for them.

I know that I do not need to consume communion for communion to be mine.
And still, in that moment, I felt like a child reaching for a parent—
for a hand of steady,
for a step of guidance,
for the closeness that says come here without conditions.

The distance wasn’t only about my legs.

That’s the part I can’t let myself reduce it to—because if I name this as “my mobility moment,” it stays small and personal, and it isn’t. The distance between people and the table is bigger than one body’s ability to stand in a line.

Some people can’t reach the table because their body won’t cooperate.
Some can’t because anxiety locks them in place when the room starts moving.
Some can’t because crowds trigger what they’ve survived.
Some can’t because shame has convinced them they don’t belong near holy things.
Some can’t because the church taught them communion is for the “clean” and the “certain.”
Some can’t because they’re new and don’t know the choreography.
Some can’t because they’ve been stared at before, corrected before, judged before—so they stay seated to stay safe.
Some can’t because they’re grieving and the walk feels like a public collapse.
Some can’t because they’re sober and the cup is complicated.
Some can’t because they’re parenting a child who can’t wait in a line.
Some can’t because poverty makes everything feel like scarcity, even grace, even bread.

The reasons are endless. And most of them aren’t visible from the aisle.

So when I say “the table was right in front of me and not reachable,” I’m not only talking about feet and balance. I’m talking about the quiet distances people carry into sanctuaries every week—the distances we don’t notice because we’re used to the way the line moves.

I tried to keep it contained. I tried to make it small.
But there was one in the room who saw.
Maybe it was my tears. Maybe it was my stillness. Maybe it was the way my body told the truth without permission.

And being seen like that—quietly, without spectacle—shifted something in me.

Because to be seen in the chapel of the seminary that will someday stand behind my ordination…
to be seen there, in that moment where the table was both promised and unreachable…
was not small.

It altered my path.

And then—communion came.

It came to my chair. It came without theatrics and without shame. It came as body and blood in the exact place my body needed to be. It came with tenderness that didn’t make me a project.

And I left that chapel carrying a clearer call than I walked in with:

Ministry isn’t built on blending in. It’s built on presence. On noticing. On the kind of attention that meets people where they already are.

It felt like the Spirit tapping the mic and saying:

This is part of your ordination too.

Not the paperwork. Not the title. Not the stole.

This.

The call to build rooms where access isn’t an afterthought.
The call to make sure the table isn’t “open” in theory but unreachable in practice.
The call to lead like someone who remembers what it felt like to be held and halted at the same time.

Welcome is not the finish line. It’s the starting point.

Unity is not sameness.

— Rogue Grace