Ann Lamott on baptism

I really liked this quote from "Traveling Mercies" by Ann Lamott. (p.231-232) A very very funny, honest and quotable book. Hilarious and yet she's a beautiful writer and has some really interesting reflections. She gets on this topic of baptism when she is complaining about how she fears the weather because it messes up the hair she spends so much time perfecting.

Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life whne you're secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction but to gauge, miserably, the odds of rain?...Because Christianity is about water: "Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." It's about baptism, for God's sake. It's about full immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in wordly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that's a little sloppy because at the same time it's also holy, and absurd. It's about surrender, giving in to all those things we can't control; it's a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched.

There's something so tender about this to me, about being willing to hav eyour makeup wash off, your eyes tear up, your nose start to run. It's tender partly because it harkens back to infancy, to your mother washing your face with love and lots of water, tending to you, making you clean all over again. And in the Christian experience of baptism, the hope is that when you go under you come out, maybe a little disoriented, you haven't dragged the old day along behind you. The hope, the belief, is that a new days i upon you now. A day when you are emboldened to take God at God's word about cleanness and protection: "When though passeth through the water, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee."