Bless This Child

Chapter 1 With Each Child, the World Begins Anew! A child enters into our midst, and face to face, hand to hand with this perfect crea-tion, we are compelled to whisper, “It’s a miracle.” In this child we see infinite potential and we place our greatest hopes. A baby reminds us from whence we came. A baby takes us back to who we really are, before all the layers of life were accumulated. A child points to our innocence, to purity, and to glee, for only a baby has the capacity to laugh like that, at the sheer joy of being alive. When we witness a child’s indescribable belly laugh, we rediscover who we are. As Christianity teaches: “Verily I say unto you, unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven...for of such is the kingdom of God.” Simply put, children are closer to heaven. Babies even smell like heaven! What parent does not rush home, perhaps from a hard day at work, yearning for the sweet smell of her newborn? With our nose nuzzled into the top of our baby’s head or in the crook of our toddler’s neck, we feel we are home— literally to where the heart is. Embracing a child brings us back to what is truly important in life, and our day falls again into perspective. We experience a sense of in-ner peace and belonging. When a child is born, all else in our lives seems to pale in comparison. Often we wonder what we did before having children that was really important. Life seems per-manently divided into two parts: pre-baby and post-baby. As one parent wrote to me, “I wish I could tell you how she has changed our lives, but I honestly can’t remember what life was like before her. It is like all the questions have been answered.” Can there be anything more life transforming? And so, my heartfelt congratulations on the birth of your new baby! You have em-barked on an exciting journey, one that will take you to places that you cannot even im-agine at this point. For such a momentous rite of passage, many families feel a need to welcome and bless their child with a ceremony. With our hearts filled with gratitude for the gift of this newly arrived soul, it is a time to celebrate. Among the first questions on the minds of new parents is this one: How do we introduce our baby to our world, and our world to our baby? If you are reading this book, this is probably the question on your mind right now. A baby welcoming, after all, is truly one of the handful of great and grand memorable events that span a lifetime, the passages that mark major family transitions. I have led hundreds of such baby blessings, and these are absolutely my favorite ceremonies to perform because to me they represent pure and boundless joy. The grace I meet upon these children’s faces, the presence of their families in my life, are the great gifts of my work. This is a work that makes the heart sing! As an ordained interfaith minister, I serve families from an amazing variety of backgrounds. They are non-denominational, interfaith, intercultural, multi-cultural, interracial, interdenomination-al, same faith, and humanist. Among them are traditionalists and non-traditionalists, the religious and non-religious, liberals and conservatives. I spend time getting to know each of my families. And I have learned a great deal about the needs and wishes of modern-day parents. Some are seeking ideas on how to plan and carry out a welcoming ceremony for their child that is non-religious but spiritual in nature. Some wonder if it’s possible to incorporate individualized elements within the traditional services and practices of the church, the synagogue, or the mosque. Others are faced with the need to honor and ac-knowledge different faiths and family traditions. Many new parents looking for just such advice and suggestions have found me through my website and my previous book, JOINING HANDS AND HEARTS, about designing interfaith wedding ceremonies. Here is a small sampling from the e-mails I have received: “What my husband and I know for sure is that we want our child to be honored and welcomed into this world properly and that we would like a ceremony based on love and life and in celebration of both families and our new joy.” “When we were married, we had a wonderful, inclusive wedding ceremony at-tended by my parish priest and a rabbi. We were really pleased with the nature of our ceremony, but we have not been able to find local resources in terms of raising an inter-faith child or even how to conduct a naming ceremony that might be inclusive like our wedding.” “I’ve been trying to think ahead about a ceremonial celebration of the birth of our first baby. We are no longer affiliated with any church, but we believe in the sacred event of life and want to honor that somehow, in a powerful, connecting way that brings our families and friends together to celebrate the life of our child.” “This is our first child and we wish to create a ceremony for him that welcomes him into this world and celebrates his uniqueness. We particularly liked the idea you mention of a ceremony that honors family members and friends. You also state that your ceremonies have a universal context. This is especially important to us.” Do you hear echoes of your own hopes and concerns in those words? BLESS THIS CHILD is for you if you and your spouse are in a same-faith mar-riage, or if you are in an interfaith marriage, or if you and your partner are parents with no faith-based inclinations whatsoever. Our emphasis is on fashioning a personal, meaningful occasion that feels uniquely right to the people involved and that completely reflects your beliefs and wishes. I call this a spiritual ceremony. Love is the key. We begin by focusing on the heart, on love, on that which is common to you and me and all life. Then we bring it up a notch—or two or three—to that which points to something greater than ourselves yet is in ourselves, to something sacred. Certainly, the birth of a child, and the ceremony that celebrates it, touches the sacred. After all, we are dealing with the miracle of life. Family is honored and embraced. Traditional aspects of baptisms and baby namings are celebrated in a universal context. All language is warm and inclusive. There is no judgment, agenda, or bias, no religious dogma. In designing a child’s welcoming ceremony, there can be no cookie cutter solu-tions—for your family’s tapestry is uniquely woven from many individual threads of personal, spiritual, religious, and cultural experiences and beliefs, past and present. Yet sadly, so many of life’s rites of passage are punctuated by rote rituals. When I became an interfaith minister, I was determined that each ceremony I conducted would be deeply reflective of the spiritual and emotional enormity of what was going on with these particular participants. I believe it is my function as a celebrant to help bring all those gathered for the occasion from the everyday eating, drinking, walking life, into a sense of the sacred, and often into the transcendent. To do this, we must see with the eye of the heart, and I work hard to create ceremonies that pierce the heart. With the information you find in these pages—readings, blessings, prayers, rituals, the real-life stories of couples and their baby namings—you can design and orchestrate your own ceremony, one to pierce the heart, one that completely reflects your family, beliefs, and cultural heritage. It is my hope, too, that clergy from all faiths will use the material in this book, perhaps adapted to their own religion and particular needs, in their services. If you are an interfaith couple It may interest you to know that approximately 30 million couples in the United States now live in interfaith households. Since there is little information available re-garding baby ceremonies for these families, I have devoted a good portion of this book to the needs of the interfaith couple. You may have questions that so many of these par-ents ask me. What is an i