How my life changed forever, My Baptism (by Gina Dennis)

How my spiritual journey led me to Baptism:

Thank you all for your prayers and your support as I go through this journey of commitments that I wholly embraced on Sunday, January 10, 2016, when I was brought into the Baptismal Covenant.

At the end of the year 2015, I met a very courageous, amazing woman named Sylvia Miller-Mutia. She encouraged me and introduced me to my now beloved Church: St. Thomas Canterbury Episcopal Church. I am so blessed that God introduced me to Sylvia and the wonderful Canterbury Community.

During 2015, I also met a woman who changed my life forever: Sally Barlow. Sally is, by far, one of the strongest individuals that I have ever met in my entire 37 years of life. She is a brilliant, beautiful, humble, and incredible person who reached out to me with amazing grace. Sally encouraged me and led me to see who I really am. I prayed my entire life that I would meet someone just like Sally. I am so blessed to have her in my life forever as my Baptism Sponsor.

What Baptism means to me:

As an Adult, my Baptism means the following to me:

*It is my duty to uphold the promises that I made.

*It is also my responsibility to always pray for and protect Sally, my Baptism Sponsor, during her life journey as well. 

*I am now empowered to feel God’s presence all around me and to feel God’s presence within every human and every being.

*I have a Green Mission to protect our Earth, our World. I will do all that I can through my work, my community, and my personal life to ensure that I protect this blessed Earth.

*I will spend the rest of my life striving for justice and for peace in our community, in our country, and in our World.

Thank You

Thank you Fritz and Don for the valuable education during the Church Catechism classes.

Thank you all, and blessings to all of you. 

A New Parent's Reflections on Baptism (by Dan Bolinteanu)

Our son Gabriel James was baptized at Canterbury on July 12th of last year, when he was just over 5 months old. As he wasn't quite able to respond to the baptismal covenant questions (apart from some minor complaints about water on his face), we made the requisite promises ourselves:
 

Will you be responsible for seeing that the child you present is brought up in the Christian faith and life? We will, with God's help.

 
Will you by your prayers and witness help this child to grow into the full stature of Christ? We will, with God's help.

Among all the joys and tribulations of being new parents, it's tempting to let these promises occasionally slip out of mind. Growing into the full stature of Christ can easily become overshadowed by the daily (rather, hourly) necessities for growing one's child into a plump, healthy, happy creature. Keeping a baby fed, clothed, diapered, well-rested and mostly happy for almost a year has at times seemed like all we could possibly handle. How can we really be expected to provide a spiritual education, when something as simple as finding time to cook a meal or fold laundry has been a challenge at times? How does one model a good Christian life when the highest goal seems to be a few extra minutes of sleep? As it turns out, the answers are right in the baptismal promises: with God's help.

As much as we tried to prepare ourselves and thought we humbly heeded warnings from more seasoned parents, we were still shell-shocked by just how much work a baby can be, and to what an extent he dominates his parents' existence. Many aspects of our lives that previously seemed important - careers, social lives, hobbies, health, even personal hygiene - quickly faded to the background when our son was born. However, our spiritual lives experienced a sudden and continuing renewal, from his birth (7 weeks earlier than we expected!), to the subsequent month-long hospital stay, to his exhausting-but-wonderful homecoming, his baptism, and his transition to an easy-going, night-sleeping (thank God!), happily-traveling almost-toddler. Throughout all of this, we have found a renewed sense of gratefulness and joy for our son and for God's help, as well as a sense of tremendous purpose and responsibility. As challenging as the usual pragmatic parental responsibilities can be, the responsibilities demanded by the baptismal promises - the moral and spiritual upbringing of a person - seem far more daunting and far more important. And unlike pragmatic responsibilities, there is no adequate, comfortable level of achievement at which one can rest; the goal is nothing less than growing 'into the full stature of Christ'. For this, we will definitely need a great deal of God's help! And a big part of that help for us has already been finding the wonderful community at Canterbury, where we have truly felt like we've gained an extended family, for Gabriel as well as for ourselves. While our experience is limited to a parenting context, we would venture that the same elements of renewal, responsibility and community are part of baptism in all its forms.

How I joined the Episcopal Church (by Fritz Frurip)

 When I left the sleepy, northern Indiana farm town where I grew up a Presbyterian, I was more than ready to go off to college in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

A favorite topic of conversation with my high school friends in 1959 was “When can we get out of here?  We couldn’t wait.  

 In 1959 Dwight Eisenhower was President and Richard Nixon was his VP; 
Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union as the 49^th and 50^th states;
The country was deep in the Cold War with Russia;
and NASA had just selected seven military pilots to be the first Astronauts.

 I was excited about living in a real city, and the first time I walked down the hall in my dorm, I was brought up short by what I saw.

The phone booths contained dial phones -- DIAL PHONES!   Of course, everybody knew about dial phones from television and movies.  But back in our little town, we still had phones with operators.

  You picked up the receiver and a woman said “Number, Please!”   You told her the number you wanted (our home number was 1-2-M), she plugged a jack into one of the holes in a bank of holes, and it started ringing on the other end.  WOW!  I was finally in a big city with dial phones.

 But, I digress, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

 I finished college with a Drama and English major, and started teaching English in the local Kalamazoo Public Schools

 I had gone to the First Presbyterian Church downtown a few times, but realized even big city Presbyterianism wasn’t the flavor I wanted.

 One day my friend Del said an old pal of his from college had finished seminary, gotten married, and was now a priest at downtown St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.  Did I want to go on Sunday?

 We went, and I was absolutely impressed. This church had everything I could ask for and more -- color, music, ritual, chanting, a tower bell that rang when the priest genuflected -- I was hooked. And I had never seen a boy choir before.

 St. Luke’s grew to be my church, and I never looked back.  It became familiar and predictable. It was home. 

 I’ve come to think that going to St Luke’s after years of attending the Presbyterian Church was like seeing a movie in wide-screen and color instead of black-and-white. 
 The church had a Rector and three assistant priests. Morning and Evening Prayer were offered Monday through Friday, and the Holy Eucharist midweek and three times on Sunday.  Lay Readers said Evening Prayer.  After a while, I had become a lay reader. Such were the times.

 Pete came to St. Luke’s as an assistant priest, three years older than I. Slowly we became friends over many evenings of Scotch and talk of church, theology and faith.  He had a healthy sense of himself as a priest whose job wasn’t to walk on water, but to serve others. 

 He had a very positive influence on my life.  We’ve known each other now for fifty years, and see each other every 2-3 years. In between we call and email.  

 And, surprisingly enough, Pete was also an Indiana boy!