The annoying thing about being human is that to be fully engaged with the world, we must be vulnerable. And the annoying thing about being vulnerable is that sometimes it means we get hurt. And when your family includes the universal church, you're going to get hurt. Probably more than once.

I can't be a Christian on my own. Like it or not, following Jesus is a group activity, something we're supposed to do together...We're going to need each other's help.

When I get to those stories in the New Testament, I'm inclined to take the sophisticated approach and assume the people who had demons cast out of them were healed of mental illness of epilepsy...But lately I've been wondering if these something important out, something about the shape and nature of evil, which, as Alexander Schmemann puts it, is not merely an absence of good but "the presence of dark and irrational power.

But perhaps the most unsettling thing about a new church is the way the ghost of the old one haunts it. For better or worse, the faith of our youth informs our fears, our nostalgia, our reactions, and our suspicions.

These were people who wore their brokenness on the outside, people whose indiscretions were so other, so uncommon, their entire personhood was relegated to the category of sinner. They were the people the religious loved to hate, for they provided a convenient sorting mechanism for externalizing sin...It's the oldest religious shortcut in the book: the easiest way to make oneself righteous is to make someone else a sinner.

I think it's safe to say we've missed the point when, of all the people in this account, we decide we're the most like Jesus. I think it's safe to say we've missed the point when we use his words to condemn and this story as a stone.

Indeed it's easier to remember things together than alone.

On the days when I am hungry - for community, for peace, for belief - I remember what it was like to feed people Jesus, and for people to feed Jesus to me.

But this friend knows better than most the nature of eucharisteo - thanksgiving - how it entered through our soft spots and seeps in through our cracks...This is why I need the Eucharist.I need the Eucharist because I need to begin each week with open hands.I need the Eucharist because I need to practice letting go and letting in. I need the Eucharist because I need to quit keeping score.