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.

The compulsion to keep a pure, homogeneous table is an old one, reflective of ingrained social customs and taboos that surround communal eating. The English word companion is derived from the Latin com ("with") and panis ("bread"). A companion, therefore, is someone with whom you share your bread.

When we want to know about a person's friends and associates, we look at the people with whom she eats, and when we want to measure someone's social status against our own, we look at the sort of dinner parties to which he gets invited...Just as a bad ingredient may contaminate a meal, we often fear bad company may contaminate our reputation or our comfort.

Wilhelm Dilthey puts it rather starkly, "Jesus came announcing the Kingdom of God, but what appeared was the church.

Seems to me that for you, evangelicalism is like the boyfriend you broke up with two years ago, but whose Facebook page you still check compulsively.

I played my role as the good Christian girl and spared everyone the drama of an argument. But that decision to remain silent split me in two. It convinced me that I could never really be myself in church. That I had to check my heart and mind at the door.

Turns out, I wasn't the only one struggling with doubt. I wasn't the only one questioning my church's position on homosexuality and gender roles, and a whole host of other issues. I wasn't the only one who felt lonely on Sunday mornings.