All Saints' Sunday reflections
Yesterday was All Saints' Sunday. My favorite feast day outside of the "Big Three" (Palm Sunday, Easter, and Christmas).
A little baby was baptized at St. John's and it brought back beautiful memories of Madeleine's baptism 6 years ago. St. John's does baptism with 3 spoonfuls of water and a dab of chrism... no dunking the naked baby in the horse trough, alas! I remember how indignant the 4-month-old Madeleine was when Margaret dipped her in the water, and how quickly she got over it and how much fun it was to walk around the altar with her wrapped in the cuddly big white towel, and everybody clapping. My heart was so full. The water was warm, and Melissa Colby had put a bunch of floaty plastic toys in the tub as a surprise.
We take on big promises when we baptize our babies. Six years ago I wouldn't have been able to predict the changes that would come. So many people stood at the altar with us, the people I felt closest to then. Six years later, my only connection that remains unchanged is the one with Madeleine. And, with the Episcopal church. My connection with her father, with her godparents, with the priest who baptized her, with the parish that I still think of as "mine" -- all radically altered. None I think entirely lost, but some estranged, some attenuated to near-invisibility.
Saying the baptismal vows again yesterday I asked myself, Am I doing for Madeleine what I promised? I am bringing her up in the Christian church and the teachings of Christ. I try to set an example of faith and service. We continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship; every Sunday we break bread; we say prayers. She experiences Christian love and fellowship through Sunday school friendships and through the affection and care of other adults. They are not the same children and adults I thought they would be when she was baptized. The human equivalent of Continental Drift has happened... distances opening between people, some as the result of overt clashes, some just silent drifting apart.
I think too about a baptism in which I became another child's godmother. I haven't seen that child's family for several years. Another connection that seems to have silently withered away.
In baptism we make promises for ourselves and our children that are for All Time, and then time moves forward; the human community changes, being a living thing knit together from bonds between human individuals, subject to strain and conflict and neglect and fear. Baptism is eternal, the human community is temporal.
The vision of All Saints' Sunday is also one of all the saints united on the other side of time... all reconciled to God... all reconciled to each other?
On this All Saints' Monday I am feeling the pain of loss and estrangement. I am praying about reconciliation on this side of time.
In Christ,
Heather
A little baby was baptized at St. John's and it brought back beautiful memories of Madeleine's baptism 6 years ago. St. John's does baptism with 3 spoonfuls of water and a dab of chrism... no dunking the naked baby in the horse trough, alas! I remember how indignant the 4-month-old Madeleine was when Margaret dipped her in the water, and how quickly she got over it and how much fun it was to walk around the altar with her wrapped in the cuddly big white towel, and everybody clapping. My heart was so full. The water was warm, and Melissa Colby had put a bunch of floaty plastic toys in the tub as a surprise.
We take on big promises when we baptize our babies. Six years ago I wouldn't have been able to predict the changes that would come. So many people stood at the altar with us, the people I felt closest to then. Six years later, my only connection that remains unchanged is the one with Madeleine. And, with the Episcopal church. My connection with her father, with her godparents, with the priest who baptized her, with the parish that I still think of as "mine" -- all radically altered. None I think entirely lost, but some estranged, some attenuated to near-invisibility.
Saying the baptismal vows again yesterday I asked myself, Am I doing for Madeleine what I promised? I am bringing her up in the Christian church and the teachings of Christ. I try to set an example of faith and service. We continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship; every Sunday we break bread; we say prayers. She experiences Christian love and fellowship through Sunday school friendships and through the affection and care of other adults. They are not the same children and adults I thought they would be when she was baptized. The human equivalent of Continental Drift has happened... distances opening between people, some as the result of overt clashes, some just silent drifting apart.
I think too about a baptism in which I became another child's godmother. I haven't seen that child's family for several years. Another connection that seems to have silently withered away.
In baptism we make promises for ourselves and our children that are for All Time, and then time moves forward; the human community changes, being a living thing knit together from bonds between human individuals, subject to strain and conflict and neglect and fear. Baptism is eternal, the human community is temporal.
The vision of All Saints' Sunday is also one of all the saints united on the other side of time... all reconciled to God... all reconciled to each other?
On this All Saints' Monday I am feeling the pain of loss and estrangement. I am praying about reconciliation on this side of time.
In Christ,
Heather
posted by hleighh at
9:07 AM
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