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Communion and Food Allergies
 

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Communion and Food Allergies

Posted by Cassidy McFadden / Asheville, NC
2/4/2019
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​​​Of all the places we inhabit, church should be among the most accessible. Until disability was something I dealt with every day, I might have said we were doing pretty well. We have elevators, handicapped parking spots, railings heading up toward the pulpit. But then I spent this last Christmas Eve at my home church and I came up against a barrier I wasn’t expecting: gluten. 

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​I’ve been gluten free for a long time, but over the last year, I’ve developed more and more restrictive food limitations. The biggest problem has been corn in nearly all its forms: corn starch, corn meal but also dextrose, maltodextrin, vinegars, natural flavors. I planned substitutions for holiday meals and I prepped ahead for all sorts of events, one-on-one and more group oriented. I intentionally made plans with friends between meals instead of during meals and I packed food for just about every step outside the house. I and others chopped vegetables about every day (or that’s what it felt like). I put extra tea bags in every bag I carried and I stocked up on non-perishable safe foods. I spent so much time figuring out food and medications and how I’d deal with my flight being delayed or cancelled that I arrived home for the holidays and discovered I hadn’t packed enough clothes. 

But back to Christmas Eve. As we were sitting in the sanctuary waiting for the music to shift from rehearsal to worship, I skimmed the bulletin. Communion. I hadn’t planned for communion. 

At home I work most Saturday and Sunday nights, so it’s been awhile since I participated in communion. I was initially pleased and then just as quickly crestfallen. Sometimes churches offer only gluten free bread at communion, though with my new limited diet I probably wouldn’t have chanced it. So after a lot of whispering between siblings, I went ahead and “took” communion with everyone else, but I took it back to our pew and let my brother eat it. (My sister joked that people might think he was just unwilling to get his own.) I’ve learned over the last few years that food issues are just hard to navigate, especially in big groups, but the more we’re supposed to follow certain rules or have a certain experience (from communion in worship to popcorn at the movies), the more being left out by default can be so isolating. 

We need more than elevators and handicapped parking. We need to start asking different questions and keep asking until we’ve accommodated everyone. Though I came up with a fairly creative solution in time for our communion, who among us needs another barrier between ourselves and communion, or the church community?



Cassidy McFadden is a registered nurse living in Asheville, North Carolina. She has fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and a host of new allergies. She's a member of the Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren in Elgin, Illinois and attends the Mill Creek Church of the Brethren in Tryon, North Carolina.

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