To Be Your Bread

Today at Mass we sang "To Be Your Bread" by David Haas at Communion. This is a song I learned when I first joined the Notre Dame Folk Choir, back in 1986. It is very much a song of its time (composed in 1985 by David Haas), representing a certain time in the history of the Catholic Church. But I still think it has beauty. And anyway it has a special meaning for me. It was sung at Communion at my wedding to Angela.  And then, more than 11 years later, when she was in the hospital after her mastectomy, she asked me to sing a song for her, and this was the only song that came to me, my voice cracking and trembling at first, then settling down to something calmer, and I hope, calming and comforting to her. And I remembered the last Sunday of her life, two days before she died, when I pushed her wheelchair up through the line to receive Communion, and she was asked whether she wanted the whole Host or a piece, and she said "piece" -- a memory that comes back to me almost every Sunday as I walk up the same aisle without her.

Refrain: To be your bread now, be your wine now,
Lord, come and change us to be a sign of your love.
Blest and broken, poured and flowing,
gift that you gave us, to be your body once again.

1. We come to your table with our lives as they are.
Heal us Lord, for we are broken; make us one again.

2. Lord, we stumble through the darkness of night.
Lead us, now, O Lord, we follow; bring us home to you.

3. Give us the bread and wine that bring us to life.
Feed us, and we'll never hunger, never thirst again.

Singing this today my voice was strong, and I felt a tingle in the back of my neck. I felt a connection to her, to our marriage that we tried to make a sign of the eternal love of God, to our life together that was broken and will never be fully healed in this world. I remembered our struggles and fears, our walk in the valley of the shadow of death. And I prayed that she and I will meet again, in that place where there is no hunger and no thirst and every tear is wiped away, the new creation that she dreamed of and hoped to understand and to know.

New Year's

The first full calendar year has passed without Angela. I haven't posted here in a long time.  But I wanted to post this today, since it would have made her smile. (I got it from a Facebook friend.)  She loved Woody Guthrie and would play his music for her classes in environmental history (Dust Bowl Ballads and Columbia River songs...)

This is a couple of pages from one of his journals.