The Mysterious Fruit of the Vine

There is something about distance from familiar spaces or things that makes one think of other paths to becoming. One of my first experiences with distance occurred in the Weiser Christian Church in Weiser, Idaho. I was probably six or seven years old at the time, and I was visiting “Grandma’s church.” Grandma was devoted to Christ, a truth I saw manifest in the Bibles that sat perched around the house. Grandma frequently prayed, and she was sure to teach us to follow God’s commands, including taking care in the use of God’s name.

As a young Latter-day Saint sitting in a small Christian church in rural Idaho, I’m sure there were many things that struck me as distinctly odd, different, and unexpected. None, however, was more shocking than the moment when the familiar sacramental water turned to wine in this new church—the symbolic drink looked unsettlingly like spilt blood. Unsure of how to proceed, I looked to Grandma for guidance as I was offered the familiar little plastic cup with the unfamiliar liquid, but she sat contemplatively pondering, blissfully unaware of my searching question: “Is this okay?” I’ve now come to think of this moment as my encounter with “the mysterious fruit of the vine”—which had always been water to me—forcing me to reconcile where my own tradition utilized an object quite different from other Christian communities.

It was in this moment that my questions about how to proceed in the religious spaces of others first emerged. That day, I found myself among people who unexpectedly declared “peace be with you” as I stood bewildered—uncertain, yet somehow encouraged that they were interested in my soul. I knew this was church, but it wasn’t mine. Over time, Grandma’s worship service created an open-ended invitation to me to explore how others experienced God. The service was clearly about Jesus, as marked by the large crucifix staring down at me, but everything from the hymns to the priest to the sermon felt unfamiliar. I could see that Jesus was present—so present I couldn’t look away. But where were the staid, familiar hymns that I knew by heart, even at that young age? Where was the customary cheap, white, sandwich bread, broken in its ragged form that I had learned represented Christ’s body, the clear water somehow reminiscent of his blood?

Since then, my life has been littered, blessed, and enmeshed with what