Walden Cabin: Observations typed on an old Underwood

Indulgence
I'm drinking Welchs grape juice tonight by the tumbler-ful while my wife and sister-in-law spend new years eve with a cheese cake and Pride and Prejudice on video upstairs. How did my life get so dull? It's New Year's Eve!

Years ago I could only dream of a tumbler of Welchs. Back in PEI, the deep purple robust juice was the communion "wine" at my church. Each Sunday, about mid-way through the service, a group of men looking uncomfortable in poorly fitted polyester suits would approach the communion table, heads bowed, to give thanks and serve the emblems -- Christ's body and blood in Premium Plus brand crackers and off-the-shelf grape juice. My grandmother, long a minister's wife, always said she could smell the fragrant juice the moment the silver lid with the crucifix was lifted from the tray -- even from the fifth row of pews. The ushers -- all men -- would then recite the familiar:

"This is the Lord's blood, given for you. Drink, ye, all of it. Do this this in remembrance of me." For years I couldn't understand how remembrance could be so openly misspelled, carved into the front of the oak communion table. Surely God knew.

Then the organ would start, and the tray would be passed, row by row, right by us kids. We were not allowed to partake. Until you professed your innate evil and were then dunked wearing a white shirt in front of the whole congregation, you didn't get the grape juice. The Welchs was the promised elixir of the Born Again, served in tiny thimble-sized glass goblets. Each of the Saved was given his or her own. The full communion tray looked like a Chinese checker board of tiny drinks.

It was forbidden, but the juice called to us kids. In the back room, after the service, the communion trays were left for cleaning. We sipped the leftover drips without a prayer or word of contrition. On Sundays with poor attendance to due illness or storms there would often be full thimbles-full left. We drank deep of the blood. It stained our lips, but was barely enough to satisfy our longing.

At 13, I finally took the plunge, confessed that I was born into sin, and was baptised. And I no longer had to sneak sips; it became just part of the service. Still, I wondered why a bunch of adults resorted to a child's drink to represent the Almighty. Surely the gravity of epiphany and rememberance (sic) called for real wine.

Tonight as I contemplate 2004 there's a full communion tray's worth of the deep purple emblem next to me. I still sip, but now it's just juice. And my son Jasper can have as much as he wants, with or without the dip. A-men.