My sister told me about a conversation she had with a coworker when the Priest at my church retired. The coworker knew the Priest because she had been in a wedding at the church, and she liked him very much. "He showed me the secret sign," she said, and crossed her arms across her chest. It was great.
The secret sign is what you do if you go up to the rail during the Eucharist, the ceremony of bread and wine that represents the body and blood of Christ, but you don't want to receive the Eucharist, so you just get a blessing instead. In my church, all baptised Christians are invited to receive the Eucharist, but that still leaves quite a few people out (when I was growing up, you had to have been Confirmed into that same church, so it was a more rare privilege, but I understand that ideas of membership and inclusion have changed a lot since then, which shouldn't be surprising because the whole Prayer Book was revised in 1982).
What happens when you go up to the rail and cross your arms over your chest, instead of extending them in a cupped form to receive the Host, is that the Priest puts his hand on your head and gives you a blessing.
I love it when the priest puts his hand on my head and gives me a blessing. It happened to me during a ceremony to welcome new members to my current church, which I still remember vividly. There were about four of us being welcomed (and I had been contacted the week before so I knew it was happening and that I would be called up). The head of the welcome committee, a lovely and gentle and wise young woman, stood beside us four and said, "Father, I present with joy these new members." I still remember the way she said "with joy". The Priest then put his hands on our heads, one by one, and said a prayer. I still vividly remember the feeling of his hands on my head. They were firm, strong, authoritative, comforting, safe, confident. It was way more than just a guy putting his hands on my head. Priest's hands feel different, with the whole strength of God and the Church (and the strength from years of doing this kind of blessing) within them. It really felt like a gesture from a "Father", which of course is what we call him.
Now, I go up to the Eucharist rail every Sunday with the rest of the congregation for Communion, and I have written previously about why, and what all it means to me. But sometimes I think about crossing my arms across my chest instead, and making him put his hands on my head and getting the blessing that is offered to all, even the unbaptised, even the non-Christian, even the member of the wedding party who has never been to this church before but wants to participate.
So, why don't I? I was thinking about this last week, and thinking about the different dimension that the Eucharist has. Sure, it's a blessing too. A "Father" is not just blessing you, he's feeding you. But with it comes also a responsibility. You are not just one person, blessed, you are, by receiving this food and drink, a member of the whole community. And you take responsibility to carry this meal, to carry God who is now inside you, out the doors and into your next week. "Now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do," is a line from the post-Eucharist prayer, the very last thing we say together before the final hymn and the dismissal. I love that line. The whole service reminds me, every week, to be more mindful and grateful of the beauty of reality and of life, and to appreciate all the good things and the people I love, and to do better to honor those gifts and act in a loving way and be the best person I can be, and be the best steward of this reality in which I live.
So, I still choose to extend my hands for the Host, instead of crossing my arms for a Blessing, even though Blessings are wonderful, and I long for that feeling of the Priests's hands on my head, but Blessings are just one-directional, him (plus God and Church) to me, whereas the shared Eucharist meal is a choice to belong, and an agreement to do your part as a member of the community.
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