The Lord's Supper

At that holiest of feasts, we are known not just by our official names but by the names people use who have known us longest and most intimately. We are welcomed not as the solid citizens that our Sunday best suggests we are but in all our inner tackiness and tatteredness that no one in the world knows better than we each of us know it about ourselves—the bitterness, the phoniness, the confusion, the irritability, the prurience, the half-heartedness. The bread of heaven, Freddy, of all people? Molly? Bill? Ridiculous little What's-her-name? Boring old So-and-so? Extraordinary.

-Frederick Buechner, The Clown in the Belfry, 10.

At the Name of Jesus

At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow
every tongue confess him King of glory now;
'tis the Father's pleasure we should call him Lord,
who from the beginning was the mighty Word.

At his voice creation sprang at once to sight:
all the angel faces, all the hosts of light,
thrones and dominations, stars upon their way,
all the heavenly order in their great array.

Humbled for a season, to receive a name
from the lips of sinners, unto whom he came;
faithfully he bore it spotless to the last,
brought it back victorious when from death he passed;

bore it up triumphant with its human light,
through all ranks of creatures, to the central height
to the throne of Godhead, to the Father's breast;
filled it with the glory of that perfect rest.

In your hearts enthrone him; there let him subdue
all that is not holy, all that is not true.
crown him as your Captain in temptation's hour;
let his will enfold you in its light and power.

Brothers, this Lord Jesus shall return again,
with his Father's glory, with his angel train;
for all wreaths of empire meet upon his brow,
and our hearts confess him King of glory now.

Name him brothers, name him, with love strong as death
but with awe and wonder, and with baited breath;
he is God the Saviour, he is Christ the Lord,
ever to be worshiped, trusted and adored.

-Caroline M. Noel

Archie

...[Wart] felt a curious sensation at his ear. "Don't jump," said Merlyn, just as he was going to do so, and the Wart sat still. Archimedes, who had been standing forgotten on his shoulder all this time, was gently touching himself against him. His beak was right against the lobe of the ear, which its bristles made to tickle, and suddenly a soft hoarse little voice whispered, "How d'you do," so that it sounded right inside his head.

"Oh, owl!" cried the Wart, forgetting about Merlyn's troubles instantly. "Look, he has decided to talk to me!"

The Wart gently leaned his head against the soft feathers, and the brown owl, taking the rim of his ear in its beak, quickly nibbled right round it with the smallest nibbles.

"I shall call him Archie!" exclaimed the Wart.

"I trust you will do nothing of the sort," cried Merlyn instantly, in a stern and angry voice, and the owl withdrew to the farthest corner of his shoulder.

"Is it wrong?"

"You might as well call me Wol, or Olly," said the owl sourly, "and have done with it."

"Or Bubbles," added the owl in a bitter voice.

-T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone, 39-40.