An Eastertide Baptism for E
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
Last week we welcomed family and friends to witness Emelia’s baptism. It was a beautiful, simple service with our community on campus. Warm evening light came in through the windows while the water was blessed and scooped up over her head. Loved ones surrounded us and we all lit up with pure delight when Emelia began to clap for the very first time. I never imagined myself standing at the baptismal font with my family, but it was a memory I’ll hold for a long time.
Sharing this milestone with our parents and dear friends, who are now Emelia’s godparents, made this moment extra sweet. It’s fun to watch our families make new memories together and relish their titles as Dadi and Dada (Hindi for paternal grandparents) and Grammie and Grandpa. Emelia’s godmother, Kati and I have known one another as teenagers, and now more than a decade later, wives and mothers. Since living close once again, we’ve been able to spend more time together with our husbands. It’s been truly wonderful to become four friends instead of two.
If you aren’t familiar with infant baptism, or how it’s done in the Episcopal church, I’ll share a quick glimpse into our experience. Aaron and I stood in front of the congregation with Emelia and her godparents to present her as a candidate for the sacrament of holy baptism. We turned to page 301 of the Book of Common Prayer and read from the prayers in the following pages. After answering a series of questions, the call and response text invited everyone to renew their baptismal covenant together. We prayed for Emelia and the water that would be used before processing to the fount. Aaron held our wiggly girl over the font while the priest used his hand to gently pull the water from the basin to her head. He then blessed her with a dab of oil on her forehead while a deacon handed me a lit candle in honor of the sacrament.
Only in recent years did I begin to ponder the role infant baptism could play in our family. Days following our courthouse vows, Aaron and I discovered we barely knew each other’s theological convictions, believe it or not. We found we held conflicting Christian views on a whole list of ideas. Baptism was one of them. I held to a “believer’s baptism” and Aaron was amenable to infant baptism. Those initial conversations were full of our own arrogance and naïveté, to say the least. Since that time we’ve loosened our grip on most of those ideas and welcomed others to rest in our open palms. Fortunately, baptism has been one of those sacraments we’ve come to cherish in the same way.
Emelia’s baptism comes at a curious time. We had no intention of aligning her baptism service with Easter or her nine month mark and yet, it was a pleasant surprise to have those events frame the day. A growing child and the feast of Eastertide are more than enough to celebrate, even on their own. Together, with the sacrament of baptism, I’ve been reflecting on the overlap and the meaning each bring to our life.
Crossing the nine month threshold has almost no cultural significance but my body surely knows. I still bear the signs of carrying her between my hips for almost ten months, and here she is, having spent that same amount of time learning how to chase her papa down the hall and raise her right eyebrow. How can life change so quickly? During my pregnancy I found such comfort in our closeness with her wrapped up in my womb. I hated thinking about space between us. And yet, I’ve come to know that to be a parent is to be separate from your child. Birth, the initial separation, sparks a million more moments that remind me of our distinct bodies and wills. She is a remarkable child. She is ours and she is her own.
Easter tells us a story about a Love that closes the space between God and God’s beloved. Scripture and our own experiences remind us our world is fraught with darkness and injustice. We remember the mystery of salvation and resurrection that illuminates the Love that’s always been with us and holds us in any circumstance or dimension. Easter closes any gap, any separateness, that might exist between us and our Creator. Though we celebrate this and ache to believe it, the tangible reality can feel like a mirage in the distance, especially in times like ours.
Holding these two tensions together offers no immediate consolation or reason, only enough grace for the day at hand. As time passes, I anticipate I’ll find myself answering Emelia’s questions about God or the flowers growing in the garden. I suspect she’ll have better answers than I will. For now we savor the memories from her baptism, a symbol of that peculiar grace.
