On my knees...

I was wondering what would take to compel me to my knees. I don’t know why, but I think about from time to time.

I remember the very first time I knelt at an alter to receive a blessing. I was 18 or 19 and just exploring the new ideas I was discovering through Christianity. I was at a Communion service and had never taken Communion, nor could then, being neither baptized nor in any legitimate way conceding to these new ideas. Not yet. I understood and respected that I wouldn’t be allowed to take the wine and bread, but the priest presiding offered an alternative. Congregants could come forward and receive a blessing. That sounded cool, and scary.

Now if you’ve ever seen a liturgical Communion or Mass, you’ll know there are some logistics involved. There’s a pattern to how people approach the alter rail, kneel, receive and return to their sets. There’s an order, so the servers don’t get confused and no one crashes into each other. I was nervous about messing up this well practiced choreography – new to the dance as I was. But I made it up there okay and knelt.

Immediately something in me reviled the action. I was surprised. I had been feeling victorious in making so far without crashing into anyone or generally embarrassing myself by messing up the process. Safe at home plate. But as soon as I landed at the alter rail I felt an intense response. It was a clenched teeth, quite, slowly enunciated reprimanded from somewhere. Almost a hiss.

Get. Off. Your. Knees!

I know for some it’s hard not to assume some diabolical creature was whispering to me (it’s my own fault I guess for using the word “hiss”), but I really think it was 100% me. I’d never before knelt in any kind of sincere act of submission to anything or anyone. Of course I stayed put and received my blessing, but I’ll never forget that spontaneous and venomous resistance to coming to my knees for the first time.

As the years passed the ritual of Holy Communion became familiar. I came to take the bread and wine, but there was less and less reaction on my part. As important as I knew and believed it was, it’s hard for those things not to become a familiar and easy action lacking any intensity – good or bad.

But I’ve often wondered what kind thing, what kind of feeling, experience, revelation or realization would cause me – compel me – for real, to my knees. Outside of a ritualized context. I imagine what it would take, what it would feel like. I think I can almost sense it. But it seems too immense, too complex, but I still feel compelled to try and imagine it. I don’t know why.