Whatever and Amen!

My namesake, Vanessa Tan, got baptized this morning at the Anglican Church - St. George's at Minden Road. I was very pleased that I found my way there without incident (ie getting lost) and very early too. So early (about 45 minutes before the service was to begin) that I managed to snag a terrific parking space below a shady tree.

I said hello to my piano teacher, who goes to the same church as Vanessa. I secretly believe Mrs Luse (whose hair is pink now, though I prefer the red she used to wear) enjoyed having two Vanessas as her pupils - one so timid and one so 'blur', although Vanessa hasn't given me reason to call her 'blur' these past couple of years and I've gotten a bit braver over time.

It was nice to see her getting her head splashed with water and speaking a solemn promise to God. After that I spent most of my time smiling at the baby next to me, Ingrid Wen-Hui Jeanette Morel Gan (phew! It's as if the parents couldn't decide on a name and placed all options down on the birth certificate. Christian name, baptism name, Chinese name, father's surname, mother's surname...), someone else who got baptized this morning. Thankfully, little Ingrid smiled back, so I didn't look like a grinning fool in case anyone happened to be looking in my direction.

It's been almost seven years since I had my own baptism. Life's changed a lot since then - I guess I've grown up, and also found my own sense of peace in the places I've been and the things I've lived through. I've been to church in Ann Arbor and felt at home, and also attended mass in Italy, which was nothing short of splendid because of the ancient paintings on the walls and the frescoes and the architecture. I suppose my spiritual experience during that time was inevitably linked to art and history. People in the past used art as a form of paying tribute to God or as a means of expressing their own spirituality. The Florentine painter and a Domenican friar, Fra Angelico, was reported to be crying as he painted the Crucifixion.

Whenever I sat in an old church in Italy, knowing that there was traffic and shopping and noise and colors outside, I was happy to rest in the quiet and still air within, listening for the shuffle of a monk's feet or a candle being lit for a saint. It's been difficult to find that same peace in the modern churches back home. I've always liked old stone walls and worn wooden benches that make up even the smallest church off a busy street. I could be in a foreign country, but still somehow find a bit of home in places like those. Not the kind of home I grew up in, but the home I've learned to make for myself whenever I traverse the map of the world.

Posted by Monoceros at April 6, 2003 2:34 PM