For a while now, I've had this daydream of going to a Catholic church every day before work and taking communion there. The problem with this notion, of course, is that the Catholic church will not give communion to non-Catholics. Their reasoning for not doing so is perfectly sound within the context of Roman Catholicism, so I don't take it as a slight at all. And I will gladly point out that if you were dying, and your particular breed of Protestant (or Orthodox, I suppose, although they probably have their own rules about this sort of thing) clergyperson weren't around, a Catholic priest would be happy to administer the sacrament to you. So as far as I can see, there's no way I can achieve my little dream unless I'm willing to either a) pretend that I'm a Catholic, b) convert to Catholicism, or c) get myself mortally wounded on a camping trip with a priest. None of these options really appeals to me at present.

Now, I would be perfectly happy to join the Catholic church as long as I could do so without sacrificing my utterly ecumenical and, to be honest, nearly syncretistic view of religion. But I doubt it would fly with the bishop. The catechism that circumscribes my peculiar salmagundi of religious perceptions has yet to be written, in any single faith.

I suppose I could go to an Episcopalian church--I was baptised an Episcopalian, and they'd look awfully petty to refuse me at this point. But this seems like a half-measure. Plus, I don't think any of the Episcopal churches around here offers daily communion. We Methodists sure don't. We generally only like to take communion once a month, and even then it seems like a kind of necessary chore, like doing the bills or cleaning the drapes.

One thing that the Methodist Church does during communion that I frankly could do without is this bizarre practice called "intinction." I've been a methodist for going on seven years, and I still don't get it. What happens is this: you head up to the altar and the first officiant tears off a scrap of bread from a loaf (none of those queer-tasting little wafers for the Wesleyans); you take the bit of crust and dip it into a common cup of grape juice (no alcohol for the historically teetotaling Wesleyans, either); and then shove the soggy mess into your mouth and pray that you don't hurl on your way back to the pew.

Actually, I exaggerate. It doesn't taste that bad. But what will make you gag is if you are the last person in a church of three hundred to take communion and you have to dip your little morsel into a cup half full of soggy little crumbs and lengths of crust. This is just gross. It seems like some awful fraternity initiation ritual. I have to admit that I much preferred the way it was done in the Episcopal church. The priest presses the poker-chip sized wafer on your tongue (I guess so you don't cheat and pocket the thing in hopes of throwing it out later--it tastes like cardboard) and then comes back around with the chalice, filled with real, honest-to-goodness wine, and gives you a little sip.

Why did the Methodists have to mess with this? Were people getting cold sores from sharing that single cup or something? Lockjaw? I don't know the history of it, and don't really care to.

How do you keep a sacrament sacred without burying it under legalistc mumbo-jumbo? All of the rules and regulations and ritualized behavior seems to me sometimes to be the religious equivalent of dressing up a cat in a sportcoat; the results do not properly convey the seriousness of the intent.

I am all for sacred things; I rejoice in the sacred. I believe in setting apart actions and places and time in order to consecrate them to God. I just wish we didn't have to take ourselves so seriously while we did it. We aren't the ones that make things holy; that's God's job. Think how nice it would be if we stopped trying to do it for him.

To compensate for the realities of the situation, then, there's an added scene that prefigures my Catholic daydream: I'm skulking in the narthex of a little stone church, trying to look as Catholic as possible, when a priest approaches me and says, "Hey, why do you look so freaked out?"

I say, "Because I want to take communion here, but I'm not a Catholic."

The priest smiles a wicked smile. "Ah, just do it," he whispers. "If God has a problem with it, I'll pray for forgiveness for both of us." And with a pat on the head, he ushers me into the sanctuary.