CONSECRATION BY REMOTE CONTROL
Photo by Barthelemy de Mazenod on Unsplash
We used to be able to walk the streets how we wanted. We could buy food and drink and shampoo and toilet paper. But not now. When the coronavirus broke out, it was still ok at first. But the church, always slow to think things through, didn’t think fast enough so this happened. One woman priest, alone in her yard, set up her laptop facing east on a stone altar. She wore a fox stole draped around her neck and burned sweetgrass and sage for incense, poured water and wine into a wineglass and put a cracker on a cut glass plate. She kindled a fire and turned on the computer and raised her arms and began the liturgy. When she came to the old sacred words, which to be honest, none of us have ever understood, she spoke, no she didn’t even speak, she just thought the words and so did all the people in their living rooms on the screen, and just like the story said, the words became flesh. Now the back roads are capillaries, the free ways real arteries, gushing with the blood of Christ. And the buildings that still stand are barely holding on to their soft shapes, forms of various kinds of bread, sourdough and multigrain, and rye. Cars and swingsets and lampposts are just crumbs in the eddies. We who can swim are being borne by the flow, waving at one another as we pass by.
