Implicit by Laura J. Oliver

I remember my own baptism not because I have conscious recall from infancy but because I was a first grader by the time Mom and Dad got around to it. 

We moved from Missouri to Maryland when I was barely three, and as a third daughter, this, like making me a baby book, fell through the cracks. I only feel a little bad about this. As the last child, you live with high hopes and low expectations. You sit on the hump, you get the smallest piece of dessert, and as your siblings go off into the world, you’re left behind.

My mother said baptism meant that they were giving me to God, a decision I could affirm at the age of 13 with a ceremony called Confirmation. Or, I could choose not to. Baptism signified only their intention for me—as if God and I were engaged, but it was an arranged marriage, and I could back out.

My baptism took place at Magothy Methodist, a congregation begun in a log cabin in 1764, upgraded to the present-day white clapboard church with stained glass windows of ruby, cobalt blue, and green in 1887. My parents walked me to the altar rail where the tall, charismatic minister stood waiting with his dark hair, deep-set blue eyes, and black robe. Scooping water from the baptismal font, he placed his palm on my head and consecrated me to God. A trickle of water ran down my temple towards my ear, and my mother gently wiped it away.

My family was in turmoil, and I was aware of it, so maybe the idea of being given to God- the-Good-Father was appealing. You can move an unhappy marriage to the coast, build a new house with hopes to nurture it, and even get the kids a German Shepherd pup, but a change in setting does not alter the conflict nor guarantee the transformation of the main characters.

 My father, who was incrementally checking out of the marriage and pretty bored during the weekly sermons, drew pictures on the church bulletin for my amusement. I smiled to please him, but my attention was always on the minister. So kind, safe, and exceptionally handsome. When he talked about THE Father, I thought, I wish you were my father—if there were a way to do that without hurting my own Dad’s feelings, of course.

At the end of each service, the minister stood in front of the congregation, spread his arms wide—the black robe expanding his ability to enfold us–to ask that the Lord make his face to shine upon us and give us peace.

 And then, from the back of the church (you weren’t supposed to turn around to look), the choir sang three glorious ascending “amens.” I could feel the vibration through the soles of my patent- leather mary-janes. 

As the organ played, parishioners filed down the red carpet between the dark, burnished wood pews to where the minister waited to greet us in turn as we emerged out into the sunlight. Even an anxious five-year-old received a few seconds of recognition, my small hand clasped in his, a highlight of my week. Maybe somewhere in this jumble of fathers, there was one who knew the precise number of hairs on my head, even as he knew that I had not fed the cat before we left for church that morning and that I’d taken 10 cents for ice cream out of my mother’s purse. Maybe that father still thought I was a good person, although I didn’t see how this was possible. 

When it was time for me to be confirmed, Dad was long gone, and we had become Presbyterians, which I was told were like Methodists, only more intellectual. I have no idea where these judgments came from (Presbyterians? Haha)—but I probably repeated that definition for a decade. Sorry.

I stopped attending church in my 20s, and it wasn’t until I had children of my own that I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, Wait! What if it’s all true? What if there was one point in the history of the planet that the force I think of as Love, sent one person to pay for everyone’s failings and to teach us that if you believe (the killer caveat,), prayers are always answered and…best news of all, you never die. 

In service of my own children, I was off in search of the father again.

There was a little Baptist church down the street from our house, from which the most amazing music poured each week. Piano, trumpet, drums. Members included professional musicians from the Naval Academy Band, and the church rocked. The minister was my age, also a parent with young kids, not offended by my curiosity and doubts. Church was cool. I joined the choir. I sang solos perched on the altar steps with my guitar. The first? Amy Grant’s “My Father’s Eyes.”

But Baptists believe in baptism by full immersion. To join the church officially, I would have to be dunked and emerge soaking wet in front of the congregation. I resisted for nearly a year—It was weird. A bathing suit? A robe? Dripping wet in public?

Finally, I had to prove to myself that my love was greater than my vanity. Acknowledging my homesickness for something greater than myself had to be more important than my reluctance to trust a stranger to hold me underwater then lift me to the light. 

Nowadays, twice baptized, I no longer practice or belong to any denomination. I continue to grow in my understanding of an active, responsive universe, and I live in a state of awe and gratitude. It’s just that the study of ideology and formalized worship services are no longer where I find meaning, purpose, and promise. 

But. Did you know that anything you were convinced was true before the age of five is nearly impossible to relinquish as an adult? You can continue to change in terms of your thinking, but implicit memory as opposed to explicit memory, cannot be consciously accessed nor altered. These are things that will feel true in your heart of hearts forever. You could no sooner unknow what you have learned implicitly than you could change the color of your eyes.  

This is why when I’m scared, sad, or lost in a state of longing, I still instinctively access the love to which my parents promised me as a child. The love they intended, and I confirmed. And eventually found on my own.

The Holy Spirit –from the Greek to inspire—is a breath, a wind, an advocate. 

The good father will forever remain a holy ghost.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.