Dear People of St. James’,
I was about 7 years-old, maybe 8, when my best friend from down the street, Sarah, acquired two kittens. One day, Sarah and I were sitting on the deck searching through baby name books and my well-loved Children’s Book of the Saints for the perfect names as the two tabbies wrestled with each other for dominance. Eventually we settled on Jacob and Angelica, just as the fighting reached its climax and our dear Angelica bit into Jacob’s ear hard enough to send him scrambling for cover in Sarah’s arms.
That was when we decided to baptize the kittens. Now, neither of us were particularly religious children, but I had recently seen my youngest sibling baptized, and although it didn’t seem to do Michael much good, neither of us could bear the thought of Jacob and Angelica wandering lost in the dark captivity of feline paganism. And given their recent pugnacious behavior, they clearly needed Jesus.
So, we went to work on the preparations. Sarah’s grandmother’s doilies became the most precious christening outfits – sort of lacey kitty kat capes, if you will. I filled a little bowl with water for the sprinkling. The kittens were fortunate that my family didn’t come from a background that believed in full immersion. Sarah and her brother Andrew would be the madrina and padrino – the godparents – and, as the officiant, I briefly instructed them in their responsibilities to bring these kittens up to live in harmony with each other and others.
In the end, it was a simple ceremony. “Name this cat,” I intoned solemnly. Sarah and Andrew giggled as they held forth Angelica and then Jacob for me to gently sprinkle their foreheads, repeating, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” For the record, I would do no more baptizing or pet blessing until I was ordained, and I would barely think of this event again until I stumbled across a similar scene in Marilynne Robinson’s book, Gilead.
This Sunday at 10:15 am, we will baptize Robinson Myers, son of Jason and Allison, welcoming him into the household of God and blessing him to be a blessing.
As a society, we have an anemic sense of blessing – just search #blessed, and you will see. Blessing is more than a sense of good fortune or a polite thing to offer when someone sneezes. Blessing is a way of knowing; it is that which brings us face to face with the Lord who reveals God’s self and yet remains mysterious. The face-to-face work of blessing teaches us our own identity and belovedness, just as a child learns language and connection from her parent’s own expressive face. Rowan Williams writes that, “all true forms of personal knowing and mutual honoring occur in a face-to-face relationship between persons. It is by being lovingly faced by another that the individual self becomes a soul.” In blessing, God turns toward God’s beloved creation, and we like sunflowers turning to face the sun are drawn toward God’s mysterious and life-giving light.
I think I felt it back then even in our experimental cat-tism, but I have felt it more intensely in times since when I have laid a hand on a waiting brow in acknowledgment of the sacredness of the other. Marilynne Robinson writes, “the sensation [of blessing] is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.” It is facing each other in this knowing of God’s presence in the other. This is the blessing that we need so that our lives may not be so driven by anxiety about what we lack, but rather that we may be emboldened by the hope in God’s presence among us. This is the blessing that empowers us to go out from here into a world that scarcely recognizes its own sacredness to do the work of the One who puts their name on us.
Rev. Eileen
