Wet Wet Wet

Religion and I have never really crossed paths. Sort of like the neighbour who lives diagonally across the road from you. You’re not really sure how many people live there, nor what their story is, but it’s fun to occasionally peer at them with your 300mm telescopic camera lens in between the closed blinds on your front window. Right?

Last sunday I attended a Christening/Baptism for a dear friend’s first child and gladly blew off my other plans to turn up early with Brett. My only expectation was that there was some magic trick with water to be carried out. Little did I know I was actually attending a regular church service and was going to spend the next almost-2 hours watching a parade of improvised performances including one from an old man who asked us to pray for “the mourning dead families.” I almost put up my hand to point out the inherent problems with that statement when I realised there was only one exit (intention?) and I wasn’t well placed to make a quick exit should things turn less than Christian. During the bible reading I discovered that apparently it was all about expositional writing in those days. Perhaps the desire to provide a paint a picture with words was considered unholy when the only writing implement was two rocks and a plate of stone. It wasn’t until we cracked through a few of Hillsong’s greatest hits and looked around to see a lot of mouths that at least pretended to know the words that I realised I was not amongst my usual folk.

The Christening/Baptism/Wet Baby process was nice, but I wouldn’t have been too thrilled that the whole thing was billed as “an illustration of God’s ways”. My friend’s weren’t even listed under “Also Starring”, though I’d hesitantly suggest they had more to do with their own little production than the starring attraction.

At the end of the session, by which point I was finding the phrase “Let’s Pray” significantly less humorous than at the beginning, the collection plate was passed around. While it moved past me faster than Judas’ betrayal, Brett was swept up in the emotion of singing “Jesus Is A Really Good Name” enough to empty his wallet onto the tray (an act for which it took him several hours to repent).

As I noted later on during the catered lunch, if there is one thing religion has given this world, it’s really great moustaches. If there are two things, the second is a catered lunch.