A baptism in a world of violence
When I parked the minivan in the church lot, it still sounded like the type of horror we have had no choice but to become stoic about: 20 dead in a bar, as many more wounded, a dead shooter and a thicket of questions. By the time I returned it had become something different. The deadliest shooting in the nation’s history, at a nightclub filled with LGBTQ people, an ISIS connection of some kind—and a shock that could alter our politics and public discourse in far-reaching ways.
Between turning the car radio off and on, I baptized a young woman. She scrupled to be baptized at our Lutheran church’s little font, so we borrowed a baptistry from the local Methodist-Baptist union church. There, in the midst of a little riot of American denominationalism, I stepped into the pool and made my first attempt at submerging another human being. It’s a fittingly brutal experience, much more expressive of the drowning of the Old Adam than our genteel, Neutrogena cleansing is. I wanted to stop halfway through and apologize.
As time dilated in Orlando—for the victims waiting for emergency surgery, for frantic family and friends waiting for news of loved ones gone silent, even for the news-hungry public waiting for more details—it constricted in the church. From “in the beginning Your Spirit moved over the waters” to “child of God, you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever,” we summarize the story of creation and redemption into which a new sister is abruptly and perfectly plunged.
