Baby Talk
Nana’s thirty-first, or possibly thirty-second,
sleeping baby photo . . .
This is a post about happiness and babies.
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about grief. I haven’t published it, as I’m still mulling it over.
A month ago, I started a post about being a pacifist who finds herself wishing for military action in Ukraine – and who has been surprised to discover similar feelings about violent conflict in other places, even before Russia declared war this year. I haven’t published it, as I’ve tied myself in metaphorical knots with pondering.
And I have a half-finished post about what it feels like to be on the (tail end?) of a pandemic that has caused over 6.08 million largely preventable deaths worldwide, while still seeing protests against wearing masks, as if the unpleasantness of wearing a mask outweighs the harm to my friends’ mothers. (That apostrophe is in the right place, by the way – I have three friends whose mothers, previously reasonably healthy, died from COVID.)
And then my grandson was born.
My daughter and my grandson
Those other posts will have to wait, shelved in a quiet corner.
Right now, my heart is full.
All those traumas are still hovering on the edge of my consciousness. People of integrity and compassion need to consider these issues, need to grapple with what is good and what is true, and then decide what that demands of them.
I believe that is why we are here.
As in why I am here on this earth in this body: to seek to know and understand what is true and good, and then act accordingly. Put more simply, I believe we are here to care for each other.
I avoid writing and talking about my faith except among those who share it.
For one thing, I have no basis on which to say my beliefs are more accurate than anyone else’s beliefs, or lack thereof.
The other reason I avoid anything that could be experienced as evangelizing is this: a perversion of Christianity and the tenets of many other religions is gaining traction worldwide. Almost all creeds exhort us to love one another, and care for the most vulnerable members of our communities, and yet everywhere we see people reviled, ostracized, abused, neglected, harmed, even killed, often in the name of religion, for being who they are: Palestinian, Yemeni, Muslim, Black, Jewish, Gay, Immigrant, Trans, Woman, Child.
Ukrainian.
(Religion is not the primary issue in Russia’s war on Ukraine, of course, but church leadership’s public stance is one component, as explained in The Role of Religion in Russia's War on Ukraine by Aidan Houston; Peter Mandaville PhD, United States Institute of Peace 3/17/2022.)
All of that makes me reticent to publicly associate myself with any particular religion, or to publicly share my beliefs. With that in mind, here I go . . .
I believe God exists, and that the commands variously stated as “Love one another as I have loved you” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” encompass the entire gospel, the entire Judeo-Christian faith, the entire Abrahamic creed. Beyond that principle, I try to remain open to what the truth looks like, and how good can be manifested, in every situation in which I find myself.
(Whether that constitutes “situational ethics” and whether, if so, that negates the idea of Truth with a capital “T” will have to wait for another day…)
That I fall woefully short in that trying is axiomatic. I am human, after all.
What does all this have to do with my grandson?
This adored and beautiful baby was born on March 16. As my son-in-law pointed out, 3:16 is the number of perhaps the most famous verse in the New Testament.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son . . .
I am aware the calendar designating a particular day with particular numbers is an artificial construct (and in any event, in some places in the world it was already 3/17 by the time my grandson was born, or perhaps still 3/15). I am aware the biblical verse numbers were not part of the original words, and were added generations after the words were spoken. I also find deeply unsettling and not credible the concept that sacrifice is a prerequisite to grace, as if even God is bound by some cosmic rule that there must be death before there can be forgiveness and healing. And I am thoroughly weary of the use of the masculine pronoun to describe something that cannot, by definition, have gender.
All that aside, the idea of a love so profound the lover would voluntarily give up their beloved to save others – that is breathtaking.
And so, though I freely admit the concurrence of the date we write as 3/16 and the verse we have designated 3:16 has no significance whatsoever, it makes me happy to connect the two. This date in my personal history will be remembered this way:
For the Spirit so loves the world, we are given new babies to remind us what self-sacrificing, all-encompassing love feels like.
My son-in-law and my grandson
Postscript Number One
About the title of this post, Baby Talk: I have come to realize that talking to a baby (and holding the tender warmth of a sleeping bundle of baby, and kissing the downy-soft head of a baby, and looking into the wondering eyes of a baby, and pretty much any other activity involving a baby, with the possible exception of changing a diaper or trying to console a baby who is momentarily inconsolable) is the cure for everything.
Postscript Number Two
I imagine actual scholars of religious texts and creeds would cringe at my attempt to reduce the vast, varied, and complex Abrahamic religions into a single idea. I am most decidedly not a religious scholar, and share these thoughts out of a heart overflowing with baby-love.
Postscript Number Three
Did you know the aforementioned religious scholars actually include quite a few faiths in the appellation “Abrahamic,” in addition to the Big 3? Check out this interesting Wikipedia article.
