the varieties of prayer

A friend invited me to his baptism last week, which was held in the small, trendy pool of an upscale, design-conscious midtown hotel (congruously named Grace Hotel).  The pool was in a humid room planked in reclaimed wood, with art projected onto the ceiling. 

There were about twenty candidates for baptism, five pastors to counsel, immerse and pray over them, a many-versed hymn accompanied by guitar, and a short sermon on the meaning of baptism and on the old scene by the River Jordan that could have been delivered by a country lay preacher in the 1800s - though this pastor spoke from the notes on his iPad. 

All were in swim shorts and tshirts, street clothes.  One young man, his green hipster t-shirt had an oversized print of a cassette tape on the front, was flowing with tears as he went down, then rose from the water radiant, crying, overcome.  Through his wet tshirt, you could see the big tattoo of a sixteenth note on his back.  Two of the congregation reached down to help him up from the water, a third dried him, reaching for a folded towel from a mismatched stack. 

There was a crowding around this corner of the pool, as each of the baptized emerged, a sense of love and desire to create and hold a feeling of some kind - one I know well from my own baptist past, though I could only watch it at this phase in my life.  They had gathered by the river.  Deep in the city, the folk will have their ways.