I cannot choose to fall asleep, I cannot just shutdown like C-3PO in the very first Star Wars movie does. The best I can do is choose to put myself in a posture and rhythm that welcomes sleep. “I lie down in bed, on my left side, with my knees drawn up; I close my eyes and breath slowly, putting my plans out of my mind. But the power of my will and conscience stops there, I want to go to sleep, and I’ve chosen to climb into bed—but in another sense sleep is not something under my control or at my beckoned call. I call up the visitation of sleep by imitating the breathing and posture of the sleeper…There is a moment when sleep comes, settling on this imitation of itself which I have been offering to it, and I succeed in what I am trying to be. Sleep is a gift to be received, not a decision to be made. However, it is a gift that requires a posture of reception—a kind of active welcome. What if being filled with the Spirit had the same dynamic? What if Christian practices are what Craig Dykstra calls “habitations of the Spirit” precisely because they posture us to be filled and sanctified? What if we need to first adopt a bodily posture in order to become what we are trying to be?
In the dim glow of a sanctuary, where candlelight dances like a sacred pulse, we position ourselves to receive the Holy Spirit, our bodies poised in worship. This act of surrender mirrors what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls “catching sleep,” where the body—sinking into the cradle of a soft bed, eyelids heavy as twilight, breath slowing like a tide—yields to the pull of dreams. In religious practice, I think we may also “catch” the Holy Spirit through the physicality of our postures and, profoundly, through the tangible elements of the Last Supper—bread and wine—whose textures and tastes anchor us in divine communion.
Picture the Last Supper: a table strewn with coarse, crusty bread, its earthy scent rising like a prayer, and a clay cup of wine, dark and shimmering, catching the flicker of oil lamps. Jesus, breaking the loaf with calloused hands, offers it to his disciples, their fingers brushing crumbs, their lips tasting the wine’s tart warmth. These elements are not mere symbols; they are the body’s intimate encounter with the sacred, as vital as the postures of worship—kneeling with a bowed head, arms raised like branches to the heavens, or sitting in stillness, spine straight as a pillar of faith. Merleau-Ponty’s lived body comes alive here: the act of eating and drinking in communion is a tactile, sensory dialogue with the divine, grounding the spirit in flesh.
When we partake in the Eucharist, we echo this scene. The bread, rough against the tongue, crumbles like the weight of our humanity; the wine, sharp and warm, flows like grace through the throat. These sensations—chewing, swallowing, savoring—mirror the surrender of “catching sleep,” where the body yields to a rhythm beyond conscious control. In worship, as we kneel on worn pews, the scent of incense curling like sacred breath, or stand with hands outstretched, trembling as if touching eternity, we prepare to “catch” the Holy Spirit. The bread and wine become conduits, their physicality dissolving the boundary between self and divine, like mist rising from a dawn-soaked valley.
In this embodied feast, the Spirit descends—not as an abstract force but as a presence felt in the grit of bread, the sting of wine, the ache of knees on stone. Our bodies, like those of the disciples, become vessels of grace, as natural as slipping into dreams. So, when you take the bread and sip the wine, feel their weight, their taste, their truth. Your body is not just present but alive in this sacred act, “catching the Holy Spirit” like a leaf catches the wind, woven into the divine tapestry of the Last Supper’s eternal meal.