Oh, I don't. Communion is holy, a sacrament and supposed to mean something very deeply spiritual - asking the god for forgiveness, actually experiencing a miracle inside your body, washing away of sin, etc.
If I don't worship or honor their god, I can't bring myself to participate so I just sit it out.
I used to take communion at our gay services, understanding that it was communion with everyone there and with those we were thinking of. Earlier, when I felt closer to christianity, I actually took communion (twice) according to the rite of the Church of South India, relying heavily on the line "
We are the body of Christ".
It transmorgrifies or whatever inside their bodies. Yeah, the literal idea of what's supposed to happen is yucky. As a young Catholic relative of mine said, "Yeah I take the Lord Jesus into my body. But I poop him out, too."
My mother gave up Prebyterianism when she was told about communion. She just found the idea of eating Jesus - no matter how symbolically - utterly repugnant. (Her father had also had his first depressive breakdown, and
therefore she decided, there was no god. It's 90 years ago now and she's dead 20 years, so I guess it can be told.)
Transmogrifies/"Transubstantiates"/"Transsignificates" (Transsignifies?) The Catholic church used to teach that the bread and wine literally, physically and in every other way turned into flesh and blood. When that became untenable (and repugnant) they fell back on a very Aristotelian idea that its
essence (real spiritual nature) became flesh and blood while its
accidents (external appearance and physical attributes) stayed bread and wine. They seem to have retreated from that one now (since it more and more seems just word-play) to "transsignification" which is almost a New Age "your reality / my reality" "In my universe it's really body and blood" kind of "it is but it isn't". Have your cake and eat it too, eh? And all in order to make "This is my body, ... this is my blood" true in some sense.
