-Preaching for Keeps-
We had no control over baptism. We couldn't raise our heads, much less an objection, when a blurry object wearing vestments trickled water down our foreheads to welcome us into a community of believers.
Later, I and others my age were given a second sacrement, the first one we would remember. This was the sacrement that charged the believer to confess his or her sins to a celestrial intecessor, the ordained priest.
This time I had a speaking part. I was reading.. was it the Gospel according to John, or Paul's Letter to the Corinthians? In any case, parents flanked their children in these exercises for reasons I never understood and would forever regret.
Just as I opened my mouth to speak, my father picked me up and carried me to the opposite podium, my mother a step behind. I remember the puzzled smiles of the celebrants. I remember freezing throughout the trip, knowing the passages I needed to read were getting farther and farther away. When he set me down, I moved to go back to the original podium, but my parents had seen that this one was empty and came belatedly to the right conclusion. My father lifted me again, and carried me back to the original podium, where I cleared my seven year old throat and read the passage on autopilot.
But the damage had already been done. Losing the will to walk, protest, or even lift my head had reset this spiritual clock to baptism. Therefore, I was seven years behind my peers in every major stage of spiritual growth, most notably the "no-faith" stage. I accept this as a matter of course, believing that a young person's belief system is no match for hormones, which may explain why young fanatics are so crazed, and why the old fanatics have so little trouble sending them off to die. I am no fanatic and probably never will be, but I wouldn't be surprised if I become one of those hunched creatures with obsolete clothing, mumbling pejorative about godless, immoral youth.
Today I wonder if I didn't mistake the process. Is it possible that one can go further from faith than that, to a place where hymns are a painful cacophony?
We had no control over baptism. We couldn't raise our heads, much less an objection, when a blurry object wearing vestments trickled water down our foreheads to welcome us into a community of believers.
Later, I and others my age were given a second sacrement, the first one we would remember. This was the sacrement that charged the believer to confess his or her sins to a celestrial intecessor, the ordained priest.
This time I had a speaking part. I was reading.. was it the Gospel according to John, or Paul's Letter to the Corinthians? In any case, parents flanked their children in these exercises for reasons I never understood and would forever regret.
Just as I opened my mouth to speak, my father picked me up and carried me to the opposite podium, my mother a step behind. I remember the puzzled smiles of the celebrants. I remember freezing throughout the trip, knowing the passages I needed to read were getting farther and farther away. When he set me down, I moved to go back to the original podium, but my parents had seen that this one was empty and came belatedly to the right conclusion. My father lifted me again, and carried me back to the original podium, where I cleared my seven year old throat and read the passage on autopilot.
But the damage had already been done. Losing the will to walk, protest, or even lift my head had reset this spiritual clock to baptism. Therefore, I was seven years behind my peers in every major stage of spiritual growth, most notably the "no-faith" stage. I accept this as a matter of course, believing that a young person's belief system is no match for hormones, which may explain why young fanatics are so crazed, and why the old fanatics have so little trouble sending them off to die. I am no fanatic and probably never will be, but I wouldn't be surprised if I become one of those hunched creatures with obsolete clothing, mumbling pejorative about godless, immoral youth.
Today I wonder if I didn't mistake the process. Is it possible that one can go further from faith than that, to a place where hymns are a painful cacophony?
posted by Benedict | 11:27 PM
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