This is my God Father, Dad says that he is a wild and crazy guy (something about pink underpants and computers with funny attachments). All I know is that he is my godfather... and he rocks!My Dad is a Luciferian, which means that he has an expansive view on religion and knows how to piss off or irritate religious nutbags!
None the less in the interests of welcoming me into the world he wrote this for my baptism, he tells me that he sort of nicked bits of it and reconstructed other bits cos it was hard saying what he wanted to say properly and there are theologians out there that are so good at communicating these things but they didn't quite have the words either so he used them as inspiration...
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Baptism Reading
Baptism is an acknowledgement that life is a constant process of beginnings. It’s an acceptance that the divine is all around us and through us.
Meister Eckhart said in the 14th Century, "every creature is a word of God" and "the first gift of the Sprit is newness". People often extol miracles which they have only read about, while many others doubt the existence of the miraculous. I would suggest that there is a blindness to both views.
Perhaps this is because real miracles are not sensationalist, not locked into the mythic past but tangible happenings which occur many times daily. The frequency of the miraculous often blinds us to truth. Creation through birth is the one tangible miracle that touches us all and god acts most visibly through the belly of the mother.
Within Christianity there is a tradition of original blessing and a tradition of original sin. Most of us are familiar with the doctrine of original sin. Many of us are unaware of the tradition of original blessing although fortunately it is felt by many of us deep in our psyche. It requires no intermediaries. It is tangible, it is the sky, the water and it is all of everything and it is good.
The biblical Genesis story does not begin with human sin but with the goodness of creation. John’s Gospel begins, "In the beginning was the word," not, “In the beginning was human sin.” In the words of the theologian Mathew Fox "Creation Spirituality is thus non-anthropocentric; it begins with an amazing gift of a universe which for over nineteen billion years has nurtured us in one form or another. The creation story which is now being retold by science elicits wonder and awe at our being here on this amazing planet with so many generous creatures who give their very lives for us.
Creation Spirituality is found not only in the Bible, but is also found in the traditions of native peoples of America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. It is the tradition of scientists and of artists, women and men. Creation Spirituality celebrates the wisdom of women’s experience of spirituality and justice is the cornerstone of this spirituality".
Creation spiritualty is an experience of the divine all around us and through us. Existence is Holy. It's about beginning our spiritual journeys with awe and wonder instead of guilt. It's about discovering the deep down goodness in things.
At its core, creation spirituality is a celebration of life and this brings us back to the meaning of baptism. It is foremost an acceptance of life’s rhythm and a beginning of the marking of time through ceremony and ritual as humans have done since consciousness first entered our bodies. Baptism is an acknowledgement that god is an unfolding of love and warmth over new life and old.
Jung believed that “the sole reason for human existence was to kindle a light in the darkness of being” and Aquinas said that "God became human in order that human beings might become God". When we come into contact with the miraculous and accept it in its plainness, accept it and acknowledge it for what it is, I believe that we touch god and through the creation of new life we kindle a light in the darkness of being.
This is our welcome to Oscar Alexander Finn.
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apologies to mathew fox whose words I have quoted and credited in part but I have also used them and rewritten them and changed them where I wanted to impart my own meanings and some of these ought to be more clearly credited but are not! (it's only in a couple of places but I think it deserves mention that I have done this.)
