And Relax

I was terribly excited a few days ago. I went to visit a couple who'd enquired about baptising their son - not regular churchgoers but from a family, on one side anyway, with longstanding links to the church. When the child in question is a first one, I always give the couple the option (and the order of service) of the Thanksgiving for the Gift of a Child as well as baptism, so that, if they decide they can't in conscience make the dramatic promises which are part of the baptism rite, they have another form of saying thank you to God for the fact that the child is here, and introducing him or her to the world. You may remember this coming up recently in my spiritual director's experiences.

Anyway, to my astonishment this couple told me the Thanksgiving service was what they wanted, and so we talked that through, discussing how we might personalise the service and make it special. Nobody in my experience has ever picked the Thanksgiving service, no matter how hazy their grasp of Christianity or distance from the Church: I was not merely surprised, but delighted that someone should deliberately decide they didn't want to parrot things they didn't believe, and cycled home to put the kettle on in some elation, mentally composing what I would say when we actually held the service.

Then the phone rang. 'We made a mistake,' said Young Mum, 'It's the christening service we want, with proper godparents. I just thought the other one was a shorter version ...'