Communal Communion

By Windy Taylor

“It is also called Holy Communion because, when feeding at this implausible table, Christians believe that they are communing with the Holy One himself, his spirit enlivening their spirits, heating the blood, and gladdening the heart just the way wine, as spirits, can. They are also, of course, communing with each other. To eat any meal together is to meet at the level of our most basic need…. To eat this particular meal together is to meet at the level of our most basic humanness, which involves our need not just for food but for each other. I need you to help fill my emptiness just as you need me to help fill yours. As for the emptiness that's still left over, well, we're in it together, or it in us. Maybe it's most of what makes us human and makes us brothers and sisters.” –

Frederick Buechner

Of all the indignities imposed on us during the early days of the Covid pandemic, few were more spiritually awful than the hermetically-sealed single-serving communion kits that we dutifully peeled and consumed every month. For many denominations – Anglicans, Catholics, Greek/Eastern/Russian Orthodox, and Episcopalians – communion is a weekly occurrence, and the loss of “normal” communion during the pandemic was deeply felt among those congregations.

As we emerged from pandemic restrictions and considered how to bring back a more communal communion, I offered to make the bread for our congregation. This is the story of that bread.

When I moved to Tallahassee in 2006, my mother strongly urged me to attend Faith Presbyterian Church. The senior pastor, Tom Borland, grew up here at Riverside and attended RPDS with my mom and her twin brother. We joined Faith in part because we felt like a little piece of Riverside was there. Tom baptized Hazel in 2014, just before his retirement from full-time ministry.

I knew that Faith Presbyterian had the most delicious communion bread, but it took many years to realize that it was made by a congregation member. The recipe had been passed down a few times and contained some esoteric instructions - for example, the baker is told to flip a sheet pan over and bake the bread on the back of the pan.

My friend Tracy was the primary bread-maker when I attended Faith, and she shared the recipe with me so I could help fill in when she was out of town. I was so nervous the first time I attempted the recipe! I put my phone on silent, barricaded the doors to the kitchen, and focused like a laser until the little squares were safely cooled and stored. I did not want to let God down with sub-standard communion bread.

My copy of the recipe is now liberally spattered with butter and hand-written notes. I cut the amount of sugar in half, adapted the recipe for the food processor, and bake the bread on a rimless cookie sheet instead of the back of a rimmed sheet pan. The letter of the recipe may have changed, but the spirit – a small, simple act of hospitality for the church family – remains the same.