I was so grumpy yesterday. I was talking to my friend Nayomi last night about it and we had come to the conclusion that I should sage myself when I got off the phone with her. (Saging is when one lights some dry sage, or cedar or other plants, and swirls the smoke around oneself to shake off bad vibes and experience a re-set.) I intended to do it when I got off the phone and then forgot about it. Today, as I sat silently in Quaker meeting, I remembered—I still needed to sage myself! I made a small intention to remember for when I got home.

On fifth Sundays, like today, we have an extended meeting that lasts 2.5 hours instead of the ordinary hour. And I tell you: I really needed it. At the 10-day meditation centers I learned how to meditate watching the breath come in and out of the nose, and I learned how to meditate by moving my awareness thru my body. These days at Quaker meeting my tendency is to try to empty my mind of thoughts and feel the awareness of my whole body at once. On most days my mind races for 5 to 15 minutes and then there’s usually a “drop” feeling where the whole body lights up as if a light switch turns it on. My awareness moves from being up in my head to being more near the center of my body. The whole body buzzes with aliveness.

Throughout a meeting I usually go in and out of this state. Today I experienced it fairly steadily and after a couple hours I was feeling fairly euphoric. My bad energy had melted away and my mood and body both felt wonderful. And then I realized, without any of my grumpiness going into meeting, that I had saged myself without any sage! And friends, this was a most Quakerly discovery.

Quakerism notoriously has no sacraments—no baptism, confession, communion, or anything else. The earliest Quakers denounced them as empty rituals. All meaningful spiritual matters take place on the inside. And sitting in meeting today feeling fully refreshed I realized that saging had moved from being an outward ritual to an inward act.

Growing up Catholic the outward ritual of taking communion, of eating the “body and blood of Christ,” was the essence of the Mass. And as a kid and teenager it certainly became an empty ritual for me. I’d get in line, walk to the priest, eat the eucharist, and then I would walk back to the pew and kneel down. It felt kind of nice, sure, but mostly I just did it and didn’t think much about it. Recently I’ve been reading about the Ancient Greeks and how they had been eating the flesh of their Gods for hundreds of years before Christians began doing it. In particular, the followers of Dionysus ate his flesh and drank his blood and I read that they did it to bring Dionysus’ essence into their own bodies. It seems so obvious to me now, but I don’t remember anyone ever explaining the purpose of the Catholic ritual in this way—that it was to bring the spirit and qualities of Christ inside my body. Suddenly, I had had an unexpected thought—the outward communion ritual seems potentially useful as a practice!

And again, today, as I continued sitting in meeting, Duncan stood up and spoke. The essence of his message was his recent practice of inviting himself to join others, and no longer needing to wait for invitations to come his way. He said something like, “Why not invite myself to join.” And as someone who felt so disconnected from others as a teenager, so separate from the rest of humanity, I felt this mantra of “why not invite myself to join” drop into my body and find a home in my chest. I could feel my mind and body synthesizing the spirit of the message into my being. In every kind of way, this message about moving into communion with others had become a living communion experienced wholly within myself. And just as I had discovered that saging could go sageless, I witnessed “taking communion” become an inward experience free of outward ritual.