My mouth felt like it was filled with boiling acid, spreading instantly along every nerve in my body.  The desire to wretch, to spit out my mouthful on to the floor in front of everyone, makes me stumble on the carpet.

Only the fact that the wine in my mouth is the real blood of Christ made me swallow.

Last night I lived through a nightmare I have had many times.  Only I didn’t wake up and chide myself for stressing over things that are unlikely to happen.  It was real.

Last night was the Mass and Epiphany Choral Celebration for my school and our brother school.  Everyone gets together, there’s a procession of the Wise Men (kindergarten kids in fake beards), Mass, the different grades sing, and then we all have cookies.  Nothing too dire, right?  I haven’t gone in previous years, but it seemed like a perfectly pleasant way to spend my Saturday night and get some brownie points at work to boot.

Like all (good) cradle-Catholics I’m a life-long back-of-the-church sitter.  It’s just a habit, I’ve never really thought much about it.  Legitimately, at a school event, there is no need for me to be sitting near the front.  There were plenty of parents there to see their kids being cute.  It was a nice full event.  Without much thought I waited my turn and got into the rather long line for Communion.  Slowly making my way towards the front, I wasn’t really paying attention to what was happening ahead of me, you know, trying to pray and all.  But when I was about 3 people back, I noticed that Father was dipping the host into the wine before he distributed it.  I started to get a little nervous, but tried to calm myself down.  When it was my turn I stepped up.  He dipped the bread in the wine.  I hesitated.

“Just the bread please.”

“It isn’t consecrated.”

He motioned the unconsecrated host dipped in the wine towards me.  I was holding everything up.  He looked at me like I was insane.  I didn’t know what to do.  Soon everyone would be looking.  How did I now ask for just a blessing?  How did I explain without explaining?

I panicked.  I took the unconsecrated host dipped in wine.

And yes.  Acid through body.  Desire to wretch.  Screaming from my soul to run screaming out of the room.

I practically ran back to my seat.  I was clutching my stomach, trying to swallow.  By the time I sat down, seconds that felt like hours, I was able to draw a breath and swallow.  I screwed my eyes up tight, but immediately tears started running down my cheeks.  I wanted to rip my tongue out, so I bit down on my bottom lip.  After a few minutes I  calmed down enough to dry my eyes and stop shaking.

Luckily the people I drove with didn’t want to stay long after the program ended.  I was curled up in my bed, shocked, terrified, and crying, but 10 PM.  It could have been worse.  They might have wanted to stay.

In Catholicism Epiphany isn’t just “a deep new thought” or “sudden inspiration” but rather a feast day of theological significance.  It is the day we celebrate the arrival of the Magi to venerate the Christ child.  It is the revelation of salvation to the gentiles, the inclusion of all people in the promise of freedom.  For those of us who were unlikely to have had Jewish ancestors, it’s kind of a huge deal.  The turn from “a chosen people” to “all people are chosen” made possible everything that came after it, from the indescribably beauty of Notre Dame to my daily choice to drink or not to drink.  Epiphany is the invitation.

That was not what I felt last night.  Openness and possibility and love were far from me.  I felt wholly separate from my Church, from my God, denied access because the form it takes is toxic to me.  I felt ripped in two; unable to receive and desolated from receiving.

I know that I didn’t drink.  I know that I did not intentionally ingest alcohol for the purpose of numbing my intellectual and emotional response to the world because I lack the desire to interact with reality.  I know that.  I know that I don’t have to start the sobriety clock over again.  I know I don’t have to say “I was sober, but I fell off the wagon.”  But that seems cold consolation against the moment when but drops of wine appeared to burn to ashes the resolve of two years and the achievement of Grace.

I know in the part of my brain that isn’t scraped raw that I made a choice.  I made the choice not to make a spectacle of myself.  Not to appear to cause scandal by refusing Communion after I had come up to ask for it.  And though it causes me a horrible feeling of something clawing on the inside of my chest to say so, it was the wrong choice.  I should have said no.  I should have walked away. Even if it meant that everyone would see and ask questions.  (Now, I would like to say that I don’t feel this is a choice I should have been put in the position of having to make.  The person in charge of setting up Mass needs to learn to count.)  Even though it looks like it, it isn’t as simple a matter as who am I putting first, God or me?  There is no honor to God in wanting to vomit and scream and scratch your skin off.  I can’t give anything back to God if what I have taken in is in the form of something that does me great harm.  I wasn’t in mortal peril, it wasn’t my last chance to receive (you, know, to the best of my knowledge, as yes, I could die even before I publish this post, I know that).  I was afraid.  And in fear I made a really bad call.

When Mass ended the choral program began with a recitation of T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi.”

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kiking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

I love this poem.  I love it because it focuses on the price that is paid in the Christmas story.  It does not deny the joy the birth of Christ brings into the world, but reminds us that that joy is not without cost.  The journey is difficult and the resolution unclear.  We cannot expect to meet Christ if we are not willing to suffer the hardships before us.  And what we find should we meet him will not be what we expected.  His promise to us will be fulfilled, but we are not promised that we will keep that which we valued before.  Our old life will no longer fit.  And we will not want it anymore.

It seemed like a fitting reminder in the midst of my tribulation.  There is no going back.  My old life is over and my new one will not look like the same.  And that might mean that I am temporarily embarrassed, but I can’t pretend that the truth isn’t the truth.  No wine for me, even if it is Jesus.

Also, I’m probably cured of sitting in the back at Mass now.  Middle of the church for me from here on out.

(2 Years, 3 Months and 15 Days Sober)