Liner notes · From This Cup

A whole album about communion, gratitude, and one persistent raccoon.

From This Cup (2009) is our communion record — recorded, like all eight, across a single weekend and in a single key. We tracked it on the fellowship-hall folding tables the Saturday after a Sunday that had moved us, when the gratitude was still warm and the leftover bread and grape juice were still on the counter. We mean every word of it, and we mean it literally: a raccoon let himself in through the propped side door on Friday night, sat at the edge of the light, and stayed for the whole weekend. We did not chase him. We named him Zacchaeus, for the one who climbed up to see, and he is on three of these tracks if you listen for the soft sound near the bread. What follows are the liner notes we would read aloud at the potluck, one track at a time, if you brought a chair, a small cup, and stayed for decaf.

• ✚Track 1 · "From This Cup" — The title hymn, on the cup we are handed and do not get to choose. To drink from it is to say thank you before you know the whole of what is in it. We open quietly, the way you lift a full cup so as not to spill.
• ✚Track 2 · "Bread Enough" — On the loaf that is always somehow enough. We never weigh it beforehand; there is simply enough for the row, and then the next row, and then the visitor at the back. Gratitude is the only correct response to a thing that keeps not running out.
• ✚Track 3 · "The Propped Side Door" — Written about the door we leave open on warm nights, and about who walks through it. Zacchaeus came in here. The lesson is that you do not get to pick who the open door lets in, and that the open door is still worth it.
• ✚Track 4 · "Zacchaeus at the Edge of the Light" — For our raccoon, who climbed up to see and then would not leave. He took no bread he was not offered and judged none of our pitch problems. We could all stand to be such a guest at such a table.
• ✚Track 5 · "Grape Juice, Not the Other" — On why we use the juice and not the wine, which is a smaller doctrine than people make it. The point was never the cup's contents but the hand that passes it. We pass it the way it was passed to us: without comment, with both hands.
• ✚Track 6 · "The Long Table" — A thanksgiving for the folding tables themselves, end to end down the fellowship hall, longer than the room really wants them to be. There is always room to add one more. We have measured. There is.
• ✚Track 7 · "Counted, Then Thankful" — On gratitude as arithmetic done in the right order. You count the cups, you count the chairs, you count the loaves; and only when the counting is done do you bow your head, because thankfulness is what is left over after the counting.
• ✚Track 8 · "Leave the Door for Him" — The closing benediction, and a small instruction. When you lock up, leave the side door propped a little longer than feels wise. Somebody — or some small striped somebody — may still be coming up to see. We packed the van slow that Sunday on purpose.

Album devotional · From This Cup (2009). Bring a folding chair and a small cup. The series continues, one album at a time — and yes, the raccoon is real to us.