Baptism and Trauma?
A Preview
I’ll get right to the point.
The rite of Baptism and everything that comes with it addresses our contemporary life, just as much as it did in the apostolic and late-antique Christians ages.
Baptism provides an opportunity for the traumatized to minister to the traumatized.
Before I open the curtains to show more light on what I mean, let me start with a story.
In August 1996, I was at my parents’ house and answered the phone. I was the first to hear the stunning news that my maternal uncle had died suddenly. No one was home in the age of answering machines. There was no one to DM or text. I had to wait for the family to come home.
My heart leapt immediately to my grandparents.
In 1981, my aunt Lilly died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 30. I remembered my grandparents’ ashen faces when we arrived at the parish rectory in St. Paul, the unusual sight of my grandmother sitting in my grandfather’s chair while he stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder - the same one that bore the scar from a gunshot wound during World War II.
I remembered the intensity of the affair. Priests and deacons lining up in their cassocks to console their brother (grandfather was a priest). The chilling harmony of the refrain sung at the panakhyda and funeral. The thunderous sound of the choir singing the kontakion, “Зо святими упокой,” with the stereotypical double bass descending, and the classical crescendo of the Alleluia completing the plaintive petition that God would grant my young aunt rest with the saints.
Fifteen years later, we were here, again, this time acting as unwilling heralds of their oldest child’s death at 52 - still way, way too young.
The worst part was that grandmother thought we came to surprise them with a picnic lunch. Some surprise.
We brought her nitroglycerin and blood pressure meds for fear of a heart attack.
I watched my grandfather, the old archpriest, waiting for him to cry foul, to scream in protest of the injustice he was suffering.
Small tears formed at the corners of his eyes as he made the sign of the cross and said one word.
“Совершалось.” (It is finished).
It was Saturday. Surely the parish would understand why he couldn’t serve Divine Liturgy tomorrow. I told him that I would call his bishop myself!
He looked at us and said calmly and clearly, “Why wouldn’t I go to church? I will serve liturgy as usual. And we will have a panakhyda for my son.”
Surely he was not thinking clearly. We tried to reason with him. We told him to let someone else lead prayers.
He looked directly at me since I was planning on starting seminary the next year.
“I am going to serve Divine Liturgy and we will pray for my son. And you pray for him in your parish where you will lead the choir. It’s better for me to go to liturgy than to stay home. You’ll see.”
He served liturgy and a panakhyda, not without difficulty.
Twenty-five years later, there were people giving me the same advice the day after my wife died suddenly at the age of 48. It began not with a phone call, but with the sheriff pounding on my front door at 1:00 a.m. I was scared shitless and my heart was racing beyond belief. Doorbells send off alarms in my body to this day.
So obviously, people would understand if I stayed home on Sunday. Be kind to yourself. And I remembered grandpa. There was some wisdom underpinning the impulse to go to liturgy.
In the days leading up to the liturgy, I was a wreck. The first day I was nauseated all day and could barely eat. My body was in shock. I was overwhelmed by a formidable army of thoughts, voluntary and involuntary. (Who calls their financial advisor and real estate agent the same day their spouse dies unexpectedly?)
The liturgy provided me with a familiar ritual I could perform, a rhythm and pulse of prayer, a moving stream I entered and allowed to guide me. The liturgy was teaching me how to cope with the trauma I had just experienced.
In the next installment, I will begin the process of exploring the relationship between baptism and trauma.