The Aerie
Another weekend, come and gone. The weird weather continues - intermittent blazing sunlight followed by a torrential downpour that might soak your right shoe and leave the left one dry.
We attended my new nephew's baptism today. As I have moved farther and farther away from the Catholic church in which I was raised, the whole business seems stranger and stranger.
I listened to the priest - some fellow from Bangladesh or Lahore who somehow found himself preaching in Minnesota - go on about how the oil of catechumens frees the babies from "original ssssssin". That's how he pronounced it, "Ssssssssin," putting the same kind of loathing into the first consonant that Rush Limbaugh puts into the "L" in "Liberal," and ending on a period so sharp it was almost a glottal stop.
And I sat there, wondering why people would want to believe that babies are born something other than completely pure?
But I have to admit there was a tangle of stuff involved. Not only am I a fallen Catholic and atheist, but I was also in the suburbs, so there were class-differences involved. Many of my prejudices came to the fore. My own bigotry told me that each of these people was a shallow hypocrite, with oversized faux mansions, $30,000 SUV's purchased on credit, perfect lawns and showcase living rooms, spending their empty days working contentedly at middle-management jobs and returning home to television and hobbies. Holding unquestioned views of religious and moral conservatism, and each husbanding some inner weakness, a deeply repressed pain that manifested itself in some different private perversion for each person, whether that was bulimia or depression or sexual acting-out.
So clearly I was in a pretty judgemental mood.
And I tried to get past it. And if this were some kind of literary posting, I would be able to tell you how the little babies redeemed me and I found new insight into myself. But I didn't. For a while I examined the private pains that led me to such a judgemental place, how I had always felt in conflict with the church, how my arrogant prejudice towards "shallow suburbanites" reflects my own insecurity regarding my place in the world and the way I live my life.
But eventually simple boredom set in. And after a while my nephew Andy, all of two, showed up in our pew for us to tend while his parents went through the baptismal rituals.
I cannot help but identify with Andy - with his bright blue eyes and blond hair he looks a lot like I used to. As an adoptee from Russia, he shares my adoptive heritage. And unfortunately he seems to be getting labelled as "difficult" because he, like my own youngest son, is a very high-energy child. I wasn't "difficult," but I was certainly labelled as an outcast as a youngster - my parents called me "the little old man" as a sign of how they just didn't understand me.
Bracketed by birth-siblings fore and aft, labelled as difficult, I am anxious about Andy's future. I hope that he'll be accepted and cherished. I wonder what the world will look like for him when he's older. I hope that he'll be happy.
And because I identify so strongly with him, I realize that these are simply the things I have always wanted for myself, that I'm just projecting my own problems into his world.
So I find myself back where I started, looking at all my prejudices, fears and anxieties, projecting them out on the world, and then finding the world a fearful, anxious place. Babies don't do this. Babies don't arrive in the world full of anger at their treatment and fears of judgement. Babies show up full of need and hunger and ideally find contentment and love. And if we all didn't project our legacy of fear and judgement onto them, they might just grow up perfectly happy and kind.
So I don't think babies are born with Original Sin. I think the Sin is out here, waiting for them. It's in our twisted hearts and broken minds. It's in the unquestioned prejudices and our unchallenged fears of their elders. The oil of catechumens shouldn't be applied to cleanse them, but as a warding and a repellent. If these babies today are lucky, they will not be saved from sin, they will be preserved from it.
Posted by Albatross at June 5, 2005 9:49 PM