Seizures in the Body

“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body eat and drink judgement against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and will, and some have died” (1 Corinthians 11:27-30). 

Please be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ…

Please be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ…  

Please be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ…

In defense of closed communion. 

I’m not about to start a screed against open communion, especially since the church I am a part of and wish to serve makes open communion a focal point of liturgy. I believe God sets a table for all and He redeems us all; He “desires everyone to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4). 

That being said, open communion sometimes feels like an incorrect model for health. It makes church feel more like a social club where we meet once a week for corporate prayer and worship before drinking coffee with like-minded individuals. 

This is not church, though. The church is a hospital and if we do not understand pain and wounding then we might never work through the grief that exists within us and since grief is processed in community it is the Church’s responsibility to keep the doors open for that healing to begin, among fellow pilgrims and pastors, which ironically means a closed communion. 

It may be controversial to say but even victims of tragedy, crime, or circumstances are living in a state of sin. This might be what we call ‘trauma’ and it is sin. In this case it is not their fault they are living with sin but it’s sin all the same. The ability to cut someone off from the Eucharist in times such as these shows a level of pastoral care which requires discernment, of course, however the optimum word is care. 

If the Eucharist is what we say it is… and it is. If it wasn’t my alcoholic self wouldn’t participate on Sundays but it is what we say it is… So, if the Eucharist is what we say it is then we need to understand that “indeed our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). This is serious business we’re talking about, not simply a symbol of His great sacrifice. No, this is His Blood, this is His Body. 

And they will consume us. 

The Orthodox are more explicit in their understanding of God’s eternal love being a consuming fire. This love burns away the dross of our inner and outer worlds, transforming us—glory to glory—into Him. We are becoming like Christ, like God, through the metamorphosis called Theosis. The more purified we become gradually the fiery love of God burns less and less and we experience it as His rapturous love that He has for His Creation. 

We are, through Theosis, becoming one with Him and therefore the consuming fire that is God brings us into Him.

To undergo this transformation means starting from our truly fallen and broken, traumatized self. Love hurts even from others when we are in a place that cannot accept love or feels unworthy of it. The pain that we live with that makes love an object of rejection as a matter of course, burning bridges is a chaotic survival technique from this position, fight or flight are dulled under the crushing weight of depression and anxiety. 

That’s just reacting to love offered by our fellow man. How much more rejection does the consumptive nature of God’s love face when it approaches us when we’re in that state? 

We cannot be changed from that place, the love of God cannot penetrate into our hearts and grow like a fire from within becoming a part of us so that we might become a part of Him. Our hearts harden and no one can get in. 

No One. 

So, what will the Eucharist do from that perspective? It will lose its identity as the pinnacle of the faith, it will lose its identity as the highest of sacraments and then it will become just another thing we do on Sundays. I will not claim that it will kill as St. Paul does in his epistle to the Corinthians but he may have a point in that the dulling of the Eucharist to simply a thing we do alongside our grief and trauma without being let into it is spiritual death. 

It is spiritual bypassing. What can be redeemed if we do not confront ourselves, wholly?

The Eucharist, given out freely, cannot heal what we do not bring to Christ. His Blood and His Body soak into the fibers of our being and if there is hardness of heart, ignorance of hurt, suppression of pain, etc. then the transformative elements of the sacrament cannot change us. We remain who we are, stuck in perpetual suffering because we do not confess, or even know that we need to confess, the very worst of what we’ve done and what’s been done to us. 

I struggle with this but recently I realized that I have been doing very poorly for a long time. I was raised in an angry, explosive household until I was almost sixteen then I moved into a household that was under constant threat of violence by a drug addict whom I loved and it eats me up thinking of how he was and how afraid I was of him. I turned sixteen years old in a hotel room a day before going to an entirely new school in an entirely new town because my mom and I were afraid of going to a place that, despite sleeping on my grandma’s floor for a semester, never quite felt like home. 

I smoked weed last week, the week I turned twenty-nine, downriver of a Benedictine monastery. I was with someone I trust and thought the setting was great. I was reminded almost immediately why I don’t smoke weed and never really have since putting it down when I was in my late teens. 

I took a hit and began shaking. 

It’s always concerning because it’s involuntary but I remembered that it was exactly how my body reacted when I was younger. Uncontrollable shaking. The person I was with has credentials I will not bore anyone with, but they told me I was exhibiting symptoms reminiscent of a psychogenic seizure. 

Apparently weed gives me seizures. 

If only I could’ve explained that in high school instead of slowly scaring the party while trying to find the nearest vacant room to shut myself up in until the storm passed. 

The person I was with has experience with this sort of thing and asked me to just talk about what was coming up, that this form of seizure (if it could be called that) is an involuntary integrative act where the body is processing a lot of things at once, assimilating experiences that were essentially locked in place. 

Probably because I don’t stretch enough. 

I really had nothing else to do but let what was coming up wash over me. It turns out having a seizure in the great wilderness of Northern New Mexico gives a guy plenty of time to reflect. 

What I realized was I’ve been grieving for a long time and that’s because I never figured out how to grieve in the first place. It’d almost be easier to think that it all fell apart when I was fifteen when I got moved out of an angry house into one that was soaked in rage but that’s not true. That’s not true for most of us I’d think, that there’s not one painful event that made us who we are but a series of increasingly painful events that makes being in-the-body basically untenable. 

Grounding into the body is hard, though. That’s where all the pain is, after all, but it’s also where things get done—things get healed. Dissociation never helped me process. It just transported me further from where I needed to be in order to heal. 

The problem, in hindsight, of not knowing how to grieve made quitting drinking such a flipping difficult thing to do because grieving is change; grieving leads to change but if you’re unable to do that then change becomes a frightening thing. The idea of it is difficult to wrestle with and I know that I put off getting sober for so long because I was legitimately afraid of changing. I couldn’t say goodbye to this part of my life even as I watched it ruin the life that I had. 

The shaking is change being integrated. Movement of the body, tension releasing… lots of tension. 

You still with me? 

What? Yes. 

I was just checking to see if you could still speak. 

Oh… Are you concerned at all? 

No, some seizures happen where you remain fully conscious during and some you lose consciousness. I just wanted to see if you were still lucid.

OK.

I must find a way to forgive myself for the life that I cannot have because of things that were out of my control and others’ actions that affected me. They must be forgiven. They must be forgiven and that life I cannot have was not mine to have, anyway… clearly. So, it’s time to forgive and say goodbye.  

It’s just hard to say goodbye when goodbye was so long ago. 

I don’t want to shove this down anymore.

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned… I’ve been hurt, I’ve been let down, forgotten, ignored, used, and betrayed. I’m sorry. Will you please help me?’

Redemption means using our hurt; the wounds do not heal in a way that leaves us unscathed, just like Christ used His wounds to show the disciples that it was Him, fully alive after His resurrection. It’s the same thing with us. The pain we endure is redeemed because in recovery the hurt serves a greater purpose, we use our hurt. The pain that we have borne witness to can help others. 

Christ calls us to bear each other’s pain, even if it is to simply bear witness to it. We cannot carry each other’s crosses but we can confront that which kills our fellow man and be with them in their pain; being wounded by the pain of the world. 

Just like the Eucharist. 

This is Christianity. 

St. Paisios said, “We have to make other people’s pain our own, and pray for the whole world.” 

Yes, we must heal our pain, redeem our hurt, and do it communally. But we cannot do it unless we look at it, unless we challenge ourselves to look at it. 

So, if open communion is to remain salvific then we must understand completely what’s happening when we partake in the Eucharist. The best way I can put this is that if we think of it symbolically then the other sacraments, the other elements of church, the institution of the church… they all might dissolve into that same symbolic understanding. Then church becomes an hour and a half of theater and hymns leading up to coffee. 

Maybe it is because I’m an alcoholic that this sacrament is so important to me. I’m terrified of losing what I’ve worked for these past few years. I’m scared of giving in to my passions. So, the Eucharist takes on a different level of importance for me which is why I approach with fear and trembling, praying, ‘Please be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ… Please be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ… Please be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ…’  

The theological significance of the Real Presence really does become life or death for me. 

But the thing is I can see it better because I have to see it better… I’ve had to look into this because I’m not fucking drinking again. Ever. There are certain parameters that must be worked within in order for this sacrament to be valid: apostolic succession, the epiklesis, and the correspondence between the Orthodox and Anglican communion that explicitly stated that the Eucharist was valid within our tradition! 

I have done my research and I have prayed on this; I do not care what Catholic apologists or Orthobros have to say on the matter, hell, I don’t care what my fellow Episcopalians think—our Eucharist is valid. And because our Eucharist is valid that means it has the power to heal and healing does not happen in a community that is, at best, playing church. Healing does not happen in a country club. Healing does not occur at a fucking shindig. 

Healing is done in a hospital. 

That’s what the church is and if it isn’t then that’s what the church needs to be. It needs to be a safe place, a container where trauma and pain can be brought and exposed with the correct care and guidance as its receiver. The Church does not substitute therapy or anything like that, but the church needs to be a facility of healing amongst others. 

This began with me trying to make sense of a church theology that feels reactionary against closed forms of communal worship with Christianity. And it might be. 

The Episcopal Church sometimes appears like a reactionary tradition based on what other churches are and are not doing that hurts our feelings. I mean, going back to how the Anglican tradition began it makes sense. However, if we are to be the Christian tradition that is trying to open the doors to those who were hurt by the Catholic Church or were wronged by Protestants and Jesus freaks then we need to take our role seriously. It seems like we’re too afraid to even combat heresies within our own walls because we might open an old church wound. 

This isn’t the Way. 

It’s not like I want us to start prying into people’s lives to heal them or die trying. It’s just that we need to help… and open communion is beautiful but we need to be better about what is explicitly happening when we participate in it. Our theology cannot be an implicit part of our institution because Christianity is a restorative, healing practice. 

If that is not directly addressed then as our theology becomes abstract so does our ability to heal. 

If we do not make an effort to explain that our God is a consuming fire then people may not understand Christianity is a religion of grieving. We are grieving who were yesterday, who we were before walking through the doors into this holy house, stepping into eternity (which is what liturgy is), and becoming one with He Who is. 

Grief is difficult. Change is uncomfortable. Being in the Body is hard, especially when it’s seizing, but this is where healing happens, this where the consuming fire that is our God burns away the dross that segregates us and Him to unite us both. 

Wholly becoming both Human and Divine. 

Sometimes that feels like a burning inferno and sometimes it feels like a seizure with a friend. 

If we want open communion then we need to respect open communion by being open with one another about where we are in our lives, being open to God’s grace, and being open about our pain. Communion heals and that hurts, so if this be open to all then we need to accept the responsibility for those who approach the chalice, as do they, and the grieving we all must process in order to become, “for indeed our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29).

Si comprehendis, non est Deus