Our daughter Annie begins the new year by getting "washed in the ocean"

A fine day for a baptism. 

Our daughter Annie arrived with Chris and I for the Salty Church’s annual New Year’s Day full-immersion baptism. Annie was joined by 51 others who all wore the same black T-shirt with this inscribed on it in white letters: “Washed in the ocean freed from my past today I am new” (see photos). Annie, Chris, and I were joined by family members and friends and we trudged through the soft sand to the water. 

Some of us walked, I trudged. But I was prepared. I used my high-performance rollator walker to blaze a trail through the sand. The rollator was equipped with big knobby tires which, I surmised, would be a better machine for the beach than my tiny-tire-and-tennis-ball-equipped walker. I pushed it forward and then walked to it, pushed again, walked, so on and so forth. The idea was that if I pushed it as I did across our living room, too much weight would dig-in the wheels. Now I’m not saying I am too much weight but I am and my ploy worked for a time. That’s when Joe the Biker arrived to assist. Dressed in black Boot Hill Saloon T-shirt, jeans, and big boots, he was equipped for riding his Harley and to assist a handicapped old guy through the sand. He stomped down the pesky sand granules to make a runway that paved the way to water’s edge wherein dwelt the hard-packed sand. Joe said he liked baptisms and while he was not one of the baptizees, he was happy to be here and considered it a blessing that he was sober and alive and well in ’25 and praised Jesus and I said Amen.

I was mobile via my legs the last time I was on this stretch of beach 10-plus years ago for my brother Dan’s funeral or send-off is a better term. I joined a long line of mourners that had walked from the Salty Church to the Grenada approach and onto Ormond Beach. Surfers paddled out for the appropriately-named Paddle Out and airplanes piloted by Dan’s friends flew over in the missing man formation.

But today was for the living and a fine day it was. Blue skies, gentle breeze, modest waves. Annie donned her T-shirt and joined the crowd. The Salty Church preacher greeted us, said a prayer, and issued the day’s instructions. I could tell Annie was a bit nervous but also giddy with possibilities. She is the Evangelical of the family, attendee of conservative Christian churches and one who dwells within the web of True Believers. This is the last cynical thing this fallen-away Catholic will say on this post. For this day, I am not a sarcastic liberal. I have written here about my recent experiences in a Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital where doctors and nurses and CNAs and therapists worked for 25 days to save my life. I am indebted to them and to an organized religion that would build a healing place and hire healers to manage it. While in a coma, I dreamed of reaching out and touching the hand of God or someone very much like him or her. I listened to the twice-daily prayers over the loudspeaker and said some of my own prayers. I allowed others to pray for me and took communion from a lay communicant from St. Brendan the Navigator Catholic Church. I absorbed departing greetings such as “Have a blessed day.” I often repeated their blessings.

I have much to learn from the congregation of human beings.

One of those things is that my daughter, whose struggles with mental health issues have caused her much pain, will now be baptized. I watched as two church members said a prayer, lowered her into the water, and how she sputtered and smiled when she emerged. She was touched by the spirit and the fact that her aunts and uncles and nieces and family friends came out to see it happen. And then we convened at our house for cake and tea. Annie opened gifts which included earrings and necklace crosses and a giant conch shell my brother brought from Palm Bay. The cake was delicious and a chocolate phantasmagoria.

All told, a glorious day.