Fill this Canyon with Water, for I'm Diving In: Why the Baptized Wants a Baptism

Do you see that six-year-old girl, two older brothers on each side, marveling at the Grand Canyon?

That's me, Queena Joy Yoder-now Mast. Such a strange thing, to see a photo, and then to close one's eyes and see the whole scene again, not as an outsider, but from the inside, from my young mind's memories. What that young girl thought and willed and did now matter so much to me.

My 41 year-old self was at a baptism two months ago, and I thought a brand-new thought. I stood next to my son's friend as he was pulled up, soaked and smiling, and thought "I want to go all the way under... I want that so badly." I haven't stopped wishing for this, and now I'm signed up for our church's January 26th baptism and I find myself staring gratefully at the photograph of this earnest, sincere little girl, who is and who was me. What decision was I thinking about during that time of my life?

The artist in me must have already been active then; images and movies moved me deeply. (My wicked uncles rewound 'Charlotte's Web' over and and over when they realized the spider's death would make little Queena's eyes overflow every. single. time. Can you believe they did that?!) During a Sunday evening service we watched a movie called 'Dangerous Journey;' after the lights were turned on I went and tucked myself behind the pulpit at the front of the church where there was cross on the wall. I knelt, and it was as if I was actually the main character in the story, the feelings of the pilgrim all my own. 

Where are the places and what are the physical actions where you feel like heaven and earth meet? Kneeling still matters to me, and in the past year, praying by a window has also become a significant habit. I'm always looking for God's gifts that unite the kingdom of the sky and the kingdom of this world. Christianity has so much potential to be an 'embodied faith'--The body participates in taking the bread and wine, the mystery of marriage, in baptism, in 'laying on of hands,' anointing the sick and there are more examples, for sure.  I don’t know that I’m doing everything theologically perfect by revisiting a sacrament that I consider to have fully participated in when I was six years old. I do know that I have followed Jesus from an early age, and it seems to me he is asking me to pick up this well-known picture of baptism again.

My baptism 1989:

 My people are Mennonite--and if you peel back the layers, I am too, though the core of my faith isn't a certain denominational flavor. At the center of this complexity of deep belief and theology, upbringing and even uncertain wonder is a simple wish to know and be known, to submit myself to the triune God, to Christ and his kingdom come. 

However, at the age of six and having had this "at the cross" experience, I wanted to be baptized, and if you know anything about the Anabaptist tradition I had been born into, you know 'Believer's baptism' is a really important tenet of the denomination. My young age would have been an issue for many, but fortunately my parents respected and honored the sincerity of my desire.  

I was so young! And yet I can still clearly remember glass pitcher that sometimes held our family's Sunday-dinner gravy, my dad's hands cupped over my head, releasing the water three times after the accompanying minister's ablutions. It was a thrill, the water pouring down from the top of my newly veiled head, drenching my shoulders. The child in me found joy and a giggle at this mess in a church setting while there was a serious response as well, a sense of the sacred. 

My Baptism: 2025

Physical symbols have become more and more dear to me, and my first attraction to joining in this Sunday's baptism is because going all the way under the water expresses death so well. However, the long pour has also been a much-loved symbol. I remember how any bible story containing 'oil running down the head' after my baptism brought back a tangible, tactile memory. There is a great podcast that says, (essentially): there is a rich paradigm to being baptized–it's not like you are just dying to self and being brought back to life. You are also being rescued from the chaos waters, from oppression, danger and slavery. There are so many biblical narratives that can be brought to mind when baptism happens.

Maybe the best explanation for what I expect and for my 'why' comes from this unfinished painting. I have paintings that I spend years on, and this one I started when I was 38. I dashed more paint on it at 40, and I finally finished this week.

The richness of my interior life, the deepening layers of desire, the wish to be a brush-well-dipped, well, this is why I want to be baptized. Time allows us to grow and learn and pick up a painting we need to keep working on. I want to look back at this point in my life and have a tangible, physical reminder that as I looked to an unknown future, I trusted him completely to take me through whatever chaos and whatever challenges I had ahead. I am 'all in.'

There is another baptism image, and it's not water--Christ said "I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it was already burning." His words remind me of this image from my sketchbook, where I am a small figure hidden in the burning bush. The coals that drop from unquenchable branches seem dangerous, but they drop like a surgeon's knife on the dead flesh, burning away the false self, the one I wish to bury, so that my true self can sit, or stand...

at the edge of any danger, whole, safe and at peace.

postscript—after the service:

I’m so glad, so happy. There is a certain vulnerability to baptism for anyone, and as I talked to people today I felt  pride creeping in, and one point thinking: “Do they know deep moral failure or backsliding wasn’t the impetus that lead me to chose to be baptized?” Hmm, why do we humans want to look as tidy as possible? I have already communicated my motives above, but let me say—while I was under the water God did remind me of things he wanted to leave in the water!

I have lived my whole life with high expectations (doesn’t that sound so nice). It was the word ‘critical’ that filled my mind while I was under. My hair is now dry, and I am thinking about how ‘joy’ was the word that gripped me as I wiped the water from my eyes. Can that long-standing critical spirit really just stay under the water and rot away like a neglected ill-grown fruit, replaced by joy?

Why yes, I believe it can, and will.