“And, since some of us cannot now receive you sacramentally, I beseech you to come spiritually into my heart.”
The priest probably intends these words for the people watching the service livestream, unable to partake in the bread and wine she has just consecrated. Like many church traditions, the Episcopal Church requires a priest or pastor to consecrate the communion elements; virtual consecration is generally not allowed. Hence, the addition of an optional Prayer for Spiritual Communion, for the benefit of parishioners watching online.
For me, however, these words are for me.
I am not eligible to receive the Eucharist. It’s been five years now since I identified as Christian, six since I felt assured enough of my salvation to take communion. Also, thanks to being raised in a tradition that emphasized believer’s baptism rather than infant baptism, I’ve never been baptized—a requirement in the Episcopalian tradition.
Nevertheless, I still attend services several times a year. More often than some people who do identify as Christian. Initially, I attended with the idea, imposed by the people around me, that my abandonment of Christianity was a phase.
There were a few different variations on this theme. Some people, particularly those I’d known the longest, believed the war would be over by Christmas. Others, especially those whom I’d met at Calvin, gave a longer timeline for return. St. Augustine was invoked, along with T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding: “And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.”
Even as I was annoyed with their certainty, part of me hoped that they were right. Leaving a religion is painful—the most painful loss I have experienced yet, and one which compounds all others. Death, of course, as I’d expected, but others as well. When there is no hope of a life after death, every falling-out and every disappointment takes on a new weight.
The optimism for a short-lived desert wandering has proved misplaced.
If I wanted to, I could almost forget the days of my youth, when I stared into a tiny plastic cup of grape juice at my parents’ interdenominational church, imagining it was Christ’s blood, and wondered if I believed enough that I would not drink judgement upon myself.
Or the slightly later pandemic days, when my family gathered in our living for Zoom church and took communion from the bread and grape juice my mother had set out. I alone abstained.
Instead, I have reached the stage of apostasy where I am no longer rabid with fury at God, no longer desperate to discredit my Baptist-adjacent upbringing. The stage of agnosticism where my uncertainty is no longer an obsession fluttering below my diaphragm. Most days, I don’t think about it.
And yet, on Sunday, I stand in the pew and say the words from the Book of Common Prayer and imagine that one day I will mean them.
The purpose of this imagined future varies.
Sometimes, it is purely aesthetic. As someone who spent high school devouring their library’s collection of medieval history books and T.S. Eliot, I’m easily impressed by the sensory experience of Anglo-Catholicism. Moreover, returning to the faith seems like the obvious narrative arc, a Christian edition of the monomyth.
Most of the time, it is social. I like the people I see at church.
At the same time, I cling to the moments in the service that maybe are for me. Or at least, someone like me. “For those who do not yet believe, and for those who have lost their faith, that they may receive the light of the Gospel, we pray to you, O Lord.”
And I hope that my prayer for spiritual communion will eventually mean something. (How many thoughts do prayers need to count?)
Is it only nostalgia? A culturally acceptable idea of reference?
These thoughts cross my head as I kneel at the communion railing, arms crossed over my chest. I can’t receive the Eucharist, but the priest will bless me.
Bless me too, I think, feeling suddenly insistent.
The words feel like something biblical. As I walk back to my seat, head bowed, I think they might be from the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman. (Google tells me that they are in fact from the story of Jacob and Esau.)
If I really wanted to get serious about being a maybe-catechumen (or whatever the Episcopalians call it), I should probably start reading my Bible again. Conveniently, the prayer book even has daily readings pre-assigned, so I wouldn’t have to return to my interdenominational days of stressing over what to read. (The Pauline epistles came more highly recommended, but certain books closer to the middle contained more titillating material.)
However, I can’t think too much about God on my own without starting — perhaps out of habit — to feel angry. Before I can finish a passage, I’m furious at God, and the Bible is slammed shut.
After graduating from Calvin in May 2025 with a degree in writing and Spanish, G. E. Buller decided to stay in Grand Rapids. Currently, she is working as a special education aide. Her non-writing hobbies include fussing over her aquarium and reading about medieval/early modern nuns.
