The Call of the Beloved

Notes on loving in a world that is neither safe nor sane

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Our son was baptized this weekend—a 90s-high Saturday in late July. Soren is one year old—climbing, cruising, a boy constantly in motion. My husband spent 12 hours smoking a 12-pound brisket to host our families. We made a mess of our paper plates with cheese wedges, cantaloupe, corn on the cob, biscuits, perching them on our laps in the backyard. 

It was the Saturday evening service which is always sparse, so our daughter freewheeled around the cathedral with my nephew in gentle ruckus. Soren was just hangry enough to start sounding off, so my pictures from the day include him in his white satin romper clutching a blue plastic cheerio cup, because his aunt had mercy on him. My father-in-law poured the water, and we all heard it echo through vaulted stone. Soren watched everything with wide, curious eyes. His sister was even invited to join the priest as she prepared the table for communion, where she proudly stood on a chair and imitated all the hand motions.

I ended the day with lollipop in my hair, brisket in my belly, bug bites on my ankles.

Our son was baptized this weekend—a 90s-high Saturday in late July. Elsewhere, outside the sanctuary, a world is on fire. Honeybees are dying. Bombs fall. Women are executed in their own homes by the very people sworn to keep them safe from harm. Safety latches fail, doctors get it wrong, egomaniacs maniac on.

Ours is not a safe world, nor is it a sane one. So what is baptism even good for?

Baptism means different things to different people, and to some of you, baptism doesn’t mean much of anything at all. To me, it means mostly this: for all the madness of the world, you belong to Love. 

The call of the beloved is to let yourself be loved.

In the sound of the water pouring, this is what I hear: the call to remember we are never alone, and always accompanied. The God who is named With Us is relentless in the promise that we will never go without. 

These days, I tend to think the only honest way to live is in awareness of juxtaposition. Anything else is gloss. Anything else is a paper-over hack job. Baptism does not paper over anything, but proclaims this juxtaposition openly: life, death, and life again—Christ with you through it all. And if God lives in juxtaposition, maybe we can learn to do so, too.

I thought I’d share with you a first look at my book today, with an excerpt from Quinn’s baptism when she was a baby. I was reckoning with juxtaposition, then, too. You too? I hope you enjoy 💛

Excerpted from Even After Everything:

When we got to the actual sprinkling part, Quinn on my hip, I asked Rev. Amy, “What do I do?”

She motioned for me to lean Quinn over the font. “Just tip her back over the brink,” she said.

It’s all I could do not to laugh out loud right there in the sanctuary.

Oh yes, just walk right up to the edge of everything, and lean the gravity of your tiniest beloved over the brink. Just suspend the body that is life-dependent on yours over the edge of all the terrible risks of love. What nonchalance to speak of this most existential ask. But yes, this is the very essence of baptism . . .

Baptism is our initiation into the full-circle story of God and the Paschal mystery that pulses at its bright center. We enter the orbit the only way mortals can: trembling. And tremble we should, because this is a story in which nothing is safe and everything happens: life, death, death-defying life, trauma, transcendence, and all liminalities between.

Baptism can at times feel too bright a sacrament for the eyes to bear. After all, baptism is a birth story. To witness it is to be in the labor and delivery room—just as primal, just as intimate, just as sacred. This sacrament is just as much a water burial. I once heard the story of a seminarian who remarked, “Baptism is the coolest funeral you’ll ever go to.”

Baptism is both, it is everything. What a thing to witness. No wonder in the baptismal liturgy we call for the collective commitment of all who do to support any child of God going under, rising up. No wonder we renounce the devil every time.

Zach and I trembled that day before the most existential ask of parenting, as of faith itself: surrender.

I remembered the day a backyard mosquito first broke newborn skin while she was in Zach’s arms, how he swore, but what I heard was the sea-frothed sorrow beneath—at the knowledge that for all the fury of his care, he could not even protect her from a fly. And now here we were being asked to entrust this little one we loved most to the waters that are both birth, burial, and sacred beginnings.

This is the Paschal mystery. Here we stood at its brink. Yet we were here because, even after everything, we believe in a love that is stronger than death. We believe in the auspicious future made possible by the resurrection.

I blinked back salt. Following Rev. Amy’s direction, I leaned our daughter back, and it felt as much a surrender as birth itself. The water poured, the oil anointed, and she took it all in with wide, quiet eyes. I could see the soft spot beneath her coral flowers pulsing gently, and we stood as two exposed nerves together.

“The water will evaporate,” the priest said, “but the oil will stay in the shape of the cross.”

“You are marked as Christ’s own forever.”

This is what I know. Baptism is no sacrament of safeguard. These waters are no bane against harm. Sometimes this particular circle will feel like a sanctuary, a haven, a womb, and sometimes it will feel like a gladiator ring. But whatever the circle holds, there’s nothing in it that can shake what will always be true: one’s baptismal belonging, and the love that is with us always.

If something spoke to you here, I’d invite you to preorder so you can be among the first to read it in full. I can’t wait to share it with you!

Take heart and stay feisty,