Paula Craig and Brandon WilliamsCraig in conversation about Baptism

Paula Craig (my mother and a formidable writer and poet) offered the following responses to my first draft rewrite of a Methodist Baptismal Service. My replies to her are in itallics.

I’m challenged by your re-write to articulate what I understand Christian baptism to be.

I had hoped you might be.

Baptism is an essential in-house function. It is initiation into a mystical body calling on a spiritual presence beyond our ideas of community or inclusiveness. This is a truth to be respected, revered (if not understood) and not accommodated to our social needs. Stripping and accommodating is how we have become a woefully uninitiated people…unprepared when fear, evil or grief rises among us.

In-house - agreed, but into the aforementioned body that is both mystical and incarnate, thereby demanding acceptance of the layered reality of both reverence of the transcendent and the obligation to respond to human need. The question is not which to respect but how much of each makes for solid ritual practice by serving both. Human ideas of community and inclusiveness are the only ones we have finally, to project on the divine in hopes of drawing near enough to hear the rueful (and hopefully sometimes fond) shaking of eternal heads at our fantasies. Rewrites become "stripping" or overly "accomodating" when the object becomes averting provocative discomfort rather than refining our suffering with our own malfeasance and ignorance so that it is legitimate.

Do you conceive Aidan’s baptism as being only a commitment of the Christian congregation rather than of parents and sponsors to rear the child in Christ’s holy church (meaning ‘mystical body’)? --a kind of half baptism? Have I missed your point? Or am I clear in honest disagreement?

I'm not certain if we are in disagreement yet, as postions haven't been made clear. This seems like sorting and certanly feels honest and thoroughly agreeable. Part of the question I hear you asking may be a matter of emphasis. As in a funeral, the ceremony is not for the deceased but for the living who remain. While an infant is not the equivalent at the level of consciousness with a corpse and will live with the resonance of the ritual, Baptizing has always struck me as being about the community. I suspect the divine does not require it, if the divine requires anything from us at all. With that said, I intend the rewrites to shift several dynamics, one of which is an emphasis on the immediate community present to the life of the child. This may even help slightly in bringing ideas of God a bit nearer to incarnation from the Way Out There model that makes such a fertile ground for intermediary clergy and lay persons to interpret divine will so poorly. I hope to make clear that it is ALL about the obligation of parents and sponsors to rear the child in the sacred image of Christ’s holy church, which often departs significantly from the more warty corpo-reality.

A LIST OF MY OPINIONS

I absolutely love The Summons for theological and dramatic reasons. I will sing it roughly when you all are singing it to be in solidarity with you ---I can hear all of our Scottish ancestors humming and nodding their heads.

Amen. Sing roughly if you like but certainly with gusto (see Wesley's instructions).

You can’t beat the succinct Traditional Beginning---it says exactly what you’re doing in few words without embroidery. It is timeless, states major symbols and lets everyone define “gift” for themselves. Commentary is nice but unnecessary. The Celebrant addresses the people who are initiating. Your ‘Presentation of the Hopeful’ sounds gracious, recognizing guests and visitors, but it needs a “that” before “aspires”.

Pastor Odette mercifully cut most of my commentary, beyond that the beginning is mostly influenced by her style which is less muscular than "God's mighty acts" and tends to challenge the people within her reach to take responsibility for being the hands of the body which must struggle with all that "salvation" suggests.

I believe this ceremony is the challenging of the parents and sponsors by the church (“On behalf of the whole church I ask you…”) to examine and commit to rearing the child on a definite spiritual path (that doesn’t mean the adults don’t doubt, gritch, and protest), and the parents are challenging the church to examine and commit to being responsible for what they say, do and mean around this child by their bringing him to the altar.

Agreed. Well said.

To repent means to acknowledge one’s own “missing the mark” without reserving any excuse for oneself and deciding to change! (not a feeling). One can sincerely regret one’s losses without repenting of sin. Confession has the drama of renunciation! (not ‘resolve’) which cleanses, the washing that parallels the command “to consecrate yourselves”. Wickedness is way more than cruelty.

Have restored "repent" and more but the drama of confession and wickedness begins the downhill march toward Sin as a literal original state or transgressing against religious law which estranges one from God. I don't think estrangement is possible in the way it is usually understood.
Getting at this will require considerably more space and time. Developmentally speaking, for this particular rite of passage, I'd rather get local and specific with the working of inner and outer conflict that Sin suggests, accessing human judgments like "shameful, deplorable, or utterly wrong." The solution I've chosen is not a winner but it is the best I can do at this time, given my limited understanding both of language and of sin. The best words for this might need to be a three act tragedy to get at it thoroughly.

“Do you accept the freedom…..” is a brilliant sentence that you could spend weeks analyzing. I don’t see how you can be without it. “Acceptance” is key.

Restored - how right you are!

{I get more zealous the more I go on.}

Go, Mom!

How about: “Do you, as part of the Mysterious Body, reaffirm your commitment to follow the example of Christ, trusting in grace, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, genders and races?” (You, of all people, would leave this out?)

Restored (and improved)?

“Will you nurture Aidan (this ritual is focused on him) in the community of the Church that by your teaching and example he may be guided to accept divine grace for himself, speak openly of faith, and lead a Christian life.” (not a “nice” life, or a loving life, but a Christian life)

Got it. See my version : Will you nurture one another and Aidan in loving community, so that by your teaching and example he may be guided to accept the best of the Christian tradition for himself, and help others build a life of grace, love, and faith?

(This is a commitment to teach him the mythology that his ancestors have wrestled with and been comforted by—Jesus Loves Me, the Nativity pageant, singing in the choir.)

This is also a committment to guide him toward cocreating Christian culture at the mythological level, taking responsibility for the ways the stories always include interpretation and relational consequences.

I was just wondering: Are Leon and Iris comfortable being godparents/sponsors? Didn’t you tell me they aren’t Christians? Is this accommodating? Are you planning for just parents to be responders? How can non-Christians sponsor initiates into Christ? Knowing you, I bet you and Odette have thrashed this out.

Here is an essential part. Odette made changes (re-orienting questions to parents) and I incorporated your concern. The crux is this. One of the lessons being learned by those who are defining and developing the Process Arts, by whatever name, involves what Jung refered to in terms of the "return of the repressed." The voices consigned to "not part of Us" are the ones ideally qualified to help us mature into an interdependent and flexible (read likely to survive) Us. In a room/community of Christians the god and goddessparents will be non-Christian because they are the ones who can ask him if he is perpetuating the best of what is traditional. Only the most perspicacious of an In-group can approach this. I feel strongly that godparents should be those who actually feel moved/called to be in the life of the child, rather than appearing to share a poorly understood mythological system. These are the people who love and know him, who happen to be able to inquire with him deeply, when the time comes, whether he really is living the life he believes Christ requires of him. It is precisely their position on the outside but living in a culturally Christian context which allows them the necessary perspective to sharpen his ongoing internal critique of his own behavior. This is what two centuries of rising dominance has made so difficult for Christianity as a whole.

Peace be with you, my son----, a ritual is not in “whatever way” but a specific, repeated, handed-down way. The Peace that is to be passed is not just regular peace but The Peace of Christ, the Peace that Passeth Understanding (a genuine wishing that ‘the other’ will experience the mystical union)

Amen, and also with you. And it is our obligation to participate in the specific, handed down, repetitions in a way that is both as conscious as possible and open to the movements of the Spirit in our time, thus the shifts of text. The Peace that Passeth needs grabbing with experiential hooks of regular peace lest we wander bruised in the station pretending that we are on the Spirit's movement that just left without us. You taught me to breathe in and share the genuine wish for the mystical union, but it was by singing over and over the very regular ritual songs that were handed down to you. Not by doing as I was told when it became clear that everybody involved had been passed by understanding.

Loving God, soul’s Mother, spirit’s Father (oh, yes, yes, yes)

Odette doesn't pray this way but I asked if we might reinstate it after her cuts - so it is back. This was right out of your mouth to my tender ears and only later reinforced by latter day post-Jungians.

“……..When you heard the cry of……through the River Jordan” both are major images to recall, necessary to the story. Typo on ‘ark.’ “Sing, all the earth. Speak and tell of God’s mercy.” (because it is not about personal activity). My preference: “He called and calls people as his disciples to share in baptism, death, and resurrection and to live as his body to carry to the world holy gifts of love and mercy.” I love and am inspired by everything from “Declare these works…… to shouts and songs.

Restored "cry" and "River," "Speak and tell," and part of your preference. I'm glad the rest caught you. I'm hoping for both shouts and songs. If nobody jumps up I may have to lead.

Rituals are a gift of the Ancestors to protect us from being trendy at big moments of our lives. I’m sure the whole thing will be a lovely sacrament. I love you all, Mom

I share your wariness of trends. If you meet anybody else carefully and cocreatively rewriting bits of ancestral ritual, trying to honor and preserve the most life giving and mysterious parts of being mortal in the presence of eternity let me know. I'd love to feel like that is a trend.

I love you too. I can't sufficiently express how fantastic it is to have this exchange. You're the most.