There is a church across the street from my office. Its architecture is intriguing; it is definitely not your traditional rectangular church. It seems to have two main entrances on different streets. I was curious to see the insides, but the doors were closed when I tried to enter. I walked away disappointed but saw a sign that said there was Eucharistic services at noon on Wednesdays. So last Wednesday I decided to try my luck again. The first doors were locked again, but I saw a sign advertising a rummage sale in what seemed to be the rectory. I tried that door and was greeted by a man who explained that there was a service going on there fore I could not visit…”unless you want to attend the service…of course”. I replied I did, and he ushered me in. We walked through the church towards a small side chapel. Before I knew it, I was being greeted by the celebrant. There were six people attending the service, they all turned to look at me. I quickly knelt down and tried to disappear. I listened more than participated as all the prayers were in English and I am not familiar with them. I could not figure out what religion this church was. The pews in the main church were like “boxes” which is typical of protestant churches, and the celebrant was a woman…but I heard her mention the catholic church and everything else she did was similar to a catholic service…but then she said “our leader Elizabeth Queen of England”, it felt odd…anyway…I was beginning to relax when it occurred to me that it was time for communion…needless to say that everyone got up to go to the communion table…I got up too in my desire to blend in. Then I remembered that I had a chewing gum in my mouth…I debated whether to keep it under my tongue but worried that it might slip out and touch the host…I had flashbacks of my youth when we were threatened with hell IF we bit on it or heaven forbid dropped it…so I chose to take it out…but I did not have any Kleenex or paper so I discretely held it in my hand…the left one, in case we had to shake hands with each other (we did…but that was later) Everything went smoothly. I was surprised that we were offered wine from a communal cup, I thought that had disappeared with the Aids scare years ago…but once again I followed the leader… I walked back to my seat at the back of the church and was eager to get the gum out of my hand and back into my mouth so I discretely bent my head towards my mouth, grabbed the gum with my teeth and expected to slip it into my mouth…unfortunately, instead of coming off my palm neatly, it stuck to my hand and stretched in two long green threads…I quickly returned the gum to my hand…and held it there as the celebrant was walking out of the chapel and waited in the portico to shake every body’s hand…I thanked her, exited quickly and went back to the office washrooms to pull it out and wash my hands…