Today, I am attended the baptism of a young friend. Jeremy Charles is delightful!
Jeremy’s Yaya is one of my dear friends, and I am so moved by her deep love and delight in him. He is thriving in the environment of her love, and I am thrilled for them to have found a spiritual community that welcomes and loves them.
I confess to having some reservations about the traditional language often used in Christian Baptism, with a focus on the ritual as necessary because of “original sin.”
Last December I wrote a contemporary ritual of infant baptism:
Life is not immortal only for Christians. Immortal life for Christians is known through the Christ but it is not limited to any single religious path. In the traditions of the world religions this nature of the more of life beyond the body is common. Life goes on. To the Christian it is immortal life in Christ. To the Native Indian, to the Buddhist, to the indigenous peoples around the planet, it is expressed in different ways. But the fact that it is expressed in different ways does not mean that the reality is different.
Life springs from that which is eternal and life is created in the image and likeness of that which is source to all of life. That image and likeness we are created in is spirit and spirit is eternal.
In Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, writes: “Where does an ice cube go in a tub of warm water? You are the cube, God is the water. For a while you seem separate from the water, but eventually you melt – you die – and discover that you, too, are water. Have fun being a cube; just don’t forget that all cubes are water, and everything is God.”
Baptism is a recognition of the true nature of our existence. We are part of that stream of eternal life. We come from God, and we return to God. We exist before birth, we exist after death. We ARE that I AM.
Baptism has power, it is affirmative, it is positive. It is the most precious gift of God and comes to us because we seek first the kingdom of God, because that kingdom is our true home.
In the September 2016 Beyond Mastery Newsletter, I share this quotation from a talk Pope Francis gave in Poland that was recently reported in our local newspaper: “People may judge you to be dreamers, because you believe in a new humanity, one that rejects hatred between peoples, one that refuses to see borders as barriers and can cherish it’s own traditions without being self-centered or small-minded.”
Oh, this is a dream my heart shares…
This morning, I recorded a short video of this hand puppet, a gift to Jeremy:
The inspiration for the video came from a story Yaya shared with me recently. She and Jeremy had been talking, and he told her she was in his heart and he was in her heart. A few days later, driving past my new office, Jeremy announced, “That’s Debra’s office.”
Yaya was amazed. Jeremy had only been to that office once, briefly, weeks earlier. She asked him, “How do you remember where Debra’s office is when you have only been there one time?”
His precious response: “Because Debra is in my heart and I am in Debra’s heart.”
You certainly are in my heart, Jeremy Charles, and I am honored to be in yours. And as our beloved puppet friend shares with you in this video, we are all also in God’s heart. We always have been. We always will be. That is just the truth about God.
