RantWoman has, um, flubbeed a proper account of herself--Twice. The first time was in Russian which either is worse or worth extra credit, depending.
RantWoman occasionally interprets for a multilingual community who were at one point so badly mistreated by the entity administering their low-income housing community that they sued and won funding for interpreters to help them talk to one another. Many of them are Baptists. Russian-speaking Baptists are more sincere and New Testament than the American Baptists of RantWoman's teenage years. RantWoman is nearly always deeply humbled when she works with the group. The people rantWoman interprets for are of quite modest means and are always concerned for those worse off than they. RantWoman's heart is always deeply fed which helps with the sense that God is also probably handling the life issues fret list that sometimes forms in RantWoman's mind on her clients' behalf.
The group works with a Romanian interpreter who also speaks Russian. The last time we were together she was quizzing RantWoman about baptism. Uhhhh. RantWoman hopes she explained a little about Rev. RantGrandfather and getting baptized as an infant without any choice about the matter.
RantWoman has been thinking about the suppositions behind the practice of baptizing infants as she and a valiant flock of readers slog through Barclay's apology and the radical for the time thought of God reborn within everyone without need to get original sin washed off to get into heaven: lots of cultures have rituals welcoming new babies. If one lives in a time or a society where there is lots of legitimate fear about a child not surviving until an age when the child can make a choice on his or her own, infant baptism serves the dual function of welcoming the child and seeking Divine protection. Baptism is perhaps the least peculiar of several family gifts that RantWoman has come to accept as a starting point with a muddle of hopelessly well-intentioned parental making things up as they went along.
As a result of that baptism though, the Baptists of RantWoman's youth decided that somehow the gift of RantGrandfather's ministrations would wash off if they made the Rant Family get dunked to join the church and we happily remained what one of the pastors called "dry-cleaned Baptists." In Russian, RantWoman left out the part about the dry cleaning as well as her visceral rebellion against the customary phrasing used for the customary immersions, "buried with him in Baptism and risen to walk in newness of life." RantWoman supposes she should check up on the baptisms both of John the Baptist and whatever happened to Jesus. RantWoman just never heard or read of Christ and any larger volume of water than footwashing and was quite intemperate in her discomfort with mangled metaphors. To say the least though, RantWoman needs to brush up both on her Quakerism and her modern Russian theology vocabulary. Stay tuned.
The second flub was last week when it fell to RantWoman as a member of Worship and Ministry to answer questions from a contingent of students from one of the local universities doing their assignments for Christian Formation by attending silent worship at 9:30 worship. Here is what RantWoman wrote in email about details of students and RantWoman connecting with each other.
Traditional Quaker worship is about waiting in silence on movements of the Holy Spirit. Among people who regularly worship at 9:30. the HolySpirit tends to take many weeks or months between vocal ministry,spoken messages but this is unpredictable.
This week, our 9:30 Adult Religious Education is actually people talking about their experiences of silent worship, how they prepare or center, experiences during the silence, leadings to speak, the effects of others' messages. I think either silent worship or a discussion centered on the thought that we are all ministers of God would be good ways to learn about Quaker
worship, but it is up to you what will speak best to your interests and the terms of your assignment.
RantWoman guessed from a line of shapes in a part of the worship room not usually populated during 9:30 worship that the students had chosen worship. The Holy Spirit showed up in worship--TWICE. The first time was a newcomer offering a memorial for someone for the sort of odor enhanced challenging presence whom many Friends undoubtedly wish God would lead to bathe. The memorial called him a teacher and did not offer further commentary on matters of God and bathing. A good while later came a message about God loving everyone in their own way and undoubtedly loving the Unwashed Teacher just as the visiting speaker unquestionably did.
A message began teasing around the edge of RantWoman's mind about recent ministry offered by Friend Poet during Adult Education: there had been discussion in small clumps of queries something to do with feeling the presence of God among other people. Two Friends in RantWoman's small group offered thoughts related to their station and education and presence in specific communities. RantWoman does not remember what Friend Poet said in the small group but was entranced with what he said when Friends were asked to reflect thoughts back to the larger group.
Friend Poet is among the vast fellowship, people of every station who make all their fashion choices at Value Village and Friend Poet spoke of feeling the presence of God in whatever other people had worn and handled his clothes before they came to him at Value Village. RantWoman suspects that several of those assembled just brushed this off as more randomness from Friend Poet, but this specifically spoke to RantWoman's flair for the physical. Worship closed before all of these thoughts settled into spoken words and RantWoman had to attend to finding the students and answering their questions.
Turns out, a big part of the assignment was to learn Friends' views about baptism and communion. RantWoman was blessed to recall some blog entries about silent worship as communion, what someone RantWoman knows refers to as direct relationship with the living body of Christ.
RantWoman found speaking of baptism a lot harder. To make matters worse, RantWoman was seized by an uncharacteristic attack of more or less proper comportment and somehow neglected to mention either boy baby fountains or the accidental convention in her Meeting of dishwashing as baptism, especially for newcomers.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/05/baby-micah-baptism.html
RantWoman found it difficult to say more than "we don't do that here." RantWoman notes that she did not register any comments her companion from Worship and Ministry either. Rantwoman hopes the students can find some of what they need for their assignment other ways and is still seasoning a leading about emailing a link to this blog post. Did RantWoman go read up on baptism at http://www.biblegateway.com/ or wikipedia? She did NOT but she did poke among selected blogs in her bookmarks, to idiosyncratic effect:
Vegan chocolate cake: reference in passing to a baptism in the family and comments about faith along with the cake recipe.
http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2007/05/vegan-chocolate-cake-annual-meeting.html
Julia Ward Howe in connection on baptism of water or tears and mothers' day.
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2009/05/mothers-day-not-just-hallmark-holiday.html
RantWoman's thoughts wandered to a message she heard once in worship, a wonderfully grounded and alive message in spite of the blood sacrifice imagery that started it off, about "washed in the blood of the Lamb," blood sacrifice coexisting in the part of RantWoman's brain that also stores slogans related to war as menstrual envy. RantWoman suspects that if she went down this path early in conversations with impressionable youth, she might be eldered severely. RantWoman is to be true to the Light she is given, but RantWoman does get to insist that the Light be pretty tightened before she actually speaks.
Two items from http://earofthesoul.blogspot.com/search?q=baptism
The ambiguity of Jesus, John the Baptist and Epiphany / Baptism puts RantWoman in mind of a question she once read on a Russian > English translators' discussion board. The proposed variants all made a point of literally translating Epiphany even though the context was ecological and RantWoman figured for an ecological context many English-speakng readers would not at all get the reference behind "Epiphany" and suggested Festival of Immersion as the title of an ecologically themed event. RantWoman in retrospec does not even want to think of how much greenwashing might be involved in word choice.
Wonderful stuff from The Good Raised Up about the absence of outward sacraments with some links for further reading.
http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/search?q=baptism
RantWoman's basic point: Your mileage may vary, and it's your duty to tend and refine your own views based on the Light within you. There is no single Quaker position: if you want literal baptism, either immersion or "dry cleaning," that's not going to happen among Quakers. A few of us may be able to help you shop for baptism options, and we would be happy to help with a clearness process so that you can figure out your own Inner Light about the matter!
RantWoman also means to formulate some queries about how Friends experience openings, cmings of age, welcoming of new babies, the wide range of events that baptism metaphors collect around.
A late-breaking addition, baptism as conversion and footwashing mixed with reconciliation:
http://quakersusanne.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/foot-washing-a-missing-sacrament/
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