Feri Godmother

[dr_pretentious]

It's not every day that I find myself publicly exhorted to renounce Satan and all his works. It's even weirder to be asked to do so as a proxy for someone else who is neurologically unable to process the question.

I'm just back from a quick trip to Rockville for my niece's baptism. Dan and I drove down Saturday night late-ish, were up for the service, were claimed by relatives all day, and then drove straight back home. It's been an exhausting time for everybody, not least my infant niece. Kate's turning into a gregarious, flirty baby, able to make eye contact across a room and track individual faces for several minutes at a stretch. I find her endlessly fascinating. Every time I see here, there's some enormous new developmental milestone she's passed.

I have, on previous occasions, described my brother-in-law in demographic terms, as a Catholic Republican from a Nebraska ranching dynasty, but that's only part of the truth. He and my sister compromised by joining an Episcopal church, and he expected his family to explode when he told them. Instead, they were already in such a tizzy over one of his female cousins having run off and got herself ordained by renegade Catholic priests, his infraction hardly registered. Perhaps he was counting on the ongoing distraction of his cousin's impending excommunication--I don't really know--but he went ahead and asked the only Wiccan of his acquaintance to be his daughter's godmother.

It was a little puzzling, but he explained that he wanted Kate to have godparents who had (1) a solid education in the Christian faith, and (2) an active spiritual life that is a source of joy to them. He wasn't all that concerned about how the two qualifications did or didn't fit together. He just wanted Kate to know, if she decided to stay Christian, that she'd chosen it for herself, having learned about her other options. The other options bit? That's my job. Apparently, the other options can't include Satanism, but since I find Satanism repellent, that one exclusion is just fine by me.

I imagine saying something like, "Jesus told you to love your neighbors. These are the neighbors." And then, I imagine, we might go on field trips. There's a Zoroastrian bookstore in Nutley that I've been wanting to go to, and it's past time I read the Zend-Avesta. The local Durga temple is open to guests. Down in DC, just about every religion you can name is represented somewhere on 16th Street. But why stop there? A pilgrimage to the Shrine of Ise might be edifying--a combo package of comfy Shinto animism and dubious divine-right-of-kings assertions, plus bonus Auntie-Mame-style international adventure. Well, maybe the Shrine of Ise's a bit of a stretch, but everything else is feasible.

Oh, and I suppose I ought to read the Bible again. And not just the greatest hits, the bits I agree with, and the obvious straw men this time. It's been a long while, and there are whole books I don't remember. How often is there call for the Book of Joel?

One of Kate's baptism gifts was a children's book, Touch and Feel Bible Stories. We all thought immediately of the bits of the Bible that ought not to be touch and feel for a young audience. The books of Ruth and Esther? Right out! And whole swaths of Genesis... But really, the touch and feel aspect consists mostly of bits of synthetic fuzziness glued onto pictures of camels. We speculated about a Scratch'n'Sniff New Testament, in which the scratch'n'sniff aspect would consist mostly of pictures of fish and sheep, but I think that might be a book even less salable than mine.

Comments

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

After rituals, Wiccans in my denomination usually say a food blessing before the feast. The version I use when Z says it's my turn to say grace is actually adapted from the blessing of the wine and cakes from the middle of the ritual liturgy, though, because it's nice and short. It's sort of morphed into, "For the gifts of love and laughter, family and abundance, we give thanks." I figure, each person at the table can thank Whoever seems appropriate.