Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Friday, April 18, 2008
Joe Orso: Holmen pastor explores mystery of baptism in book
It might be a good thing that meaning so often gets lost on us. If we were always conscious of meaning, we’d always be standing in awe.
Imagine, for instance, if every time you called “mother,” you became deeply conscious that the person you’re addressing helped create your body out of hers. Or if every time you said “sky,” what entered your mind was all of the colors and shapes that the space above Earth was at that moment.
It would get overwhelming.
And yet much of the spiritual quest comes down to restoring meaning — either to words that can become empty, like “God is in you,” or rituals that can become empty, like dancing.
The Rev. Glenn Borreson published a book this winter hoping to restore some meaning to one of these rituals.
“Folks (often) regard baptism as something for infants and children and then we leave it behind,” said Borreson, pastor at Holmen Lutheran Church. “Martin Luther would say we receive enough in baptism to study and practice our whole life. ... But I always worry about such things becoming cliches, and we speak them and we don’t think too much about it.”
Borreson wrote the book, “Water for Your Soul: Living in Baptism Every Day,” with a stipend from The Louisville Institute, and will be at a book signing from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Valley View Mall.
He said he became more interested in baptism after noticing many people coming to him who wanted their infants baptized, but little else to do with the church. The requests, he said, point to a misunderstanding that baptism is a rite for children that has nothing to do with adulthood.
“To be baptized means I’m part of the family of God,” Borreson said. “That means that no matter what the world does to me, I remain that. No matter what. I can be used and abused and misused by the world, but I remain a child of God.”
He also noted that all human beings are children of God, but in baptism, God calls people in a particular way — as followers of Jesus.
Toward the beginning of the book, Borreson writes about Luther’s “Flood Prayer,” which is used by Lutherans at baptisms and mentions how water interacted with Noah, the people of Israel fleeing Egypt and the baptism of Jesus.
“It’s as if God is not embarrassed to use this physical world to accomplish his purposes,” he said. “Baptism affirms all things physical. It affirms the goodness of Creation, the goodness of water. It affirms the physical body” (made of 90 percent water).
And like anything else we contemplate long enough, baptism can lead to the place beyond meaning.
“One of the wonderful things about baptism is that it’s an event that’s bigger than me,” he said. “It’s bigger than my mind. And I don’t have feelings about the day (of my baptism), so it’s larger than my feelings. ... It’s bigger than me, and there’s a mystery to it in that sense.”
AT A GLANCE
WHAT: Book signing for Pastor Glenn Borreson’s new book, “Water for Your Soul: Living in Baptism Every Day”
WHEN/WHERE: 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Blue Cup in the Holmen Square Shopping Center and 4 to 7 p.m. Friday at Barnes & Noble in the Valley View Mall.
BOOKS: Available at book signings or order online for $10.95 plus shipping at www.bbotw.com
Joe Orso can be reached at jorso@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8429.
All stories copyright 2000 - 2006 La Crosse Tribune and other attributed sources.