We’re two for two for baptising a baby during the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord when it came time to offer up Alexander to the altar, as it were. St. Eugene’s has got to love having the bragging rights as a baptism during this week is a surprisingly rare occurrence.
Alexander’s godparents are from opposite sides of the country… literally! Godfather Heath is currently based in Seattle where (if memory serves) he focuses on quality for a big pharmaceutical company. What I do know is that he’s right in the middle of the aviation equivalent of Mecca in the beautiful Northwest if you’re a big fan of Boeing commercial airliners (and we know who the aviation nut in this family is!). Godmother Melissa is one of Julia’s co-workers at the WakeMed children’s emergency room who has a delightful son Gabe who occasionally comes to play with Alexander’s older brother, Nicholas.
But on one pleasant weekend, everyone was brought together once again for a baptism officiated by Deacon Willie. The ceremony was obviously the same as it was for Nicholas in terms of form (the Church doesn’t exactly change quickly!) with the usual questions but this one felt different (and in some ways, more poignant!) considering all of Alexander’s health problems over the past year,
Maybe it was because the past year has been a continual baptism of sorts for him as there was rarely a day that went by where we (and pretty much everyone who knows him and his story!) weren’t asking for the powers upon high to watch over him, take care of him, and help guide him to a better life than the one he’s started out with. And that journey is hardly complete with the return of the seizures in November. We’re under no illusions that the journey will be short and easy.
The physical aspects of Alexander’s journey are probably going to be much easier than the spiritual journey. It’s normal human nature to wonder why traumatic things happen to them and why they were allowed to happen…the usual railing against the general unfairness and hostility of the universe, if you will.
Hopefully, he will come to understand that they happen for a reason and those reasons often raise many more questions than they answer. That his living and suffering through the cortical dysplasia and it’s other knock-on effects has a higher purpose than merely tormenting and testing our faith. In the past year, I’ve come to believe that one of his purposes of being in our lives is to truly make us appreciate the gifts that we have and often take for granted. The gifts of health, family, purpose, and honestly, of life itself.
That last one in particular cannot be emphasized too much…life is truly a special gift even when we feel despair about just how much our lives are worth in the face of the appalling and unimaginable things we see in this world from day to day. As long as there is life, there is hope for a better tomorrow and the desire to turn dreams into reality and vice versa.
One of my favorite books has a quote I’ve always loved: it is said that to dream in the City of Sorrows is to dream of a better future.
Alexander has touched all of us spiritually through the past year and hopefully his courage will inspire us as we grow along with him. Whether that’s making someone try to be a better parent or just a better person in general, his life has already affected so many lives, many of whom around the world he will never meet but will have profoundly affected nonetheless just because he was here. He is our dreamer of that better future and those are powerful dreams indeed.
We’re pretty lucky to be at ground zero, eh? 🙂
The dream of a better world and enlisting to be part of making that dream real by being part of something greater than oneself…well, that IS the sacrament of baptism in a nutshell! We may well have only one official baptism with the water and oils (depending on your particular faith, that is) but each day dawning is the opportunity to be born and baptised anew.
It won’t totally make the alarm clock in the morning less annoying but it certainly helps when you’re contemplating facing the new day.
Alexander, seize the dream and make it yours…come what may!
