Baptism via Whale Sneeze

Rather than ritual purification into religion, perhaps baptism could be ritual reintegration with the earth.

I don’t remember my baptism.

I was young, probably just months old, wearing some strange traditional Catholic garb, having water that was prescribed as holy sprinkled onto my head. Adopted into an ideology without choice, for the good of my soul and the sake of tradition.

Somethings are just done because that’s what you do.

Around the time I was in fourth grade, my family left the religious tradition of Catholicism and shimmied over to Protestantism, following in the footsteps of Martin Luther, just delayed by 500 or so years.

This was something they did that was not just what you do. At least not in the eyes of their Catholic context. For the first time in my young life, I remember being made aware that spiritual preference can hold contention. Certain extended family members were confused and outright at mad at the move.

My parent’s flavor of Protestantism was the hot Christian ticket at the time, non-denom mega church land. Services that made cultural allusions, had big screens, smoke machines, and contemporary music.

This setting also prioritized baptism, but saw it as a choice to be made when one was ready, rather than a ceremony imparted onto a newborn. From the age of about 11 to 21, I found myself in heavily Protestant-influenced circles. Baptism as a ritual was a big deal. That massive non-denom church would host a bbq at a county park for a baptism day in the summer. Youth group summer camps had their climax with the baptism night. The weaning hours on a mission trip would be loaded with last second decisions to be dunked.

Riding high on feelings of holiness, people wanted to mark the moment — yielding to the age old evangelical notion that you are broken, unclean… so let’s submerge you in the water and get you back on track. Purified in the eyes of Christ.

It was a way to ensure your membership into the tribe. There’s the you before going into the water, and there’s the new you that emerges. A clear delineation of old and new, but also, in a troubling sense, in or out.

My point of view on all this has largely been fairly critical so far. I do want to recognize there can also be beauty in the ritual. Change. That’s the whole deal with being human. And, at its baseline, baptism can symbolize a change from an old way to a new way. Often times for people, that change was also tied to positive life choices in addition to ideological adoption. That newfound sense of empowered self can be helpful for people. It can mend broken relationships to self and others. I had some family members who participated in a Protestant form of baptism for this reason.

But something about the whole thing never felt quite right to me, much to the chagrin of my youth pastor. I think it boiled down to the in / out feeling I described earlier. So, as I liked to joke then and still do now, I was never baptized “out” of the Catholic Church.

Early oughts of my Christian doubt around baptism paired well with my friend Bryan John Appleby’s song, Sprout.

That said, organized Christianity — Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise — isn’t my spiritual flavor any more. I find myself like a lot in my generation… drawn very much to having a spiritual life, if not a categorically religious one. I enjoy reading the mystics of as many traditions as possible, gleaning from their experiential ways of connecting with the Divine, and also finding the sacred through melting away its distinction from the secular. In others words… trying to find sacredness in as many places as possible rather than just in prescribed boxes.

For me, interaction with that mysterious presence we boil down to the three letter word “God”, happens most readily through attentiveness. Like when I am in my front yard as an assortment of bugs swirl around me, spring turning to summer and the grass long enough to feel a bit hidden within. I’ll sit there and watch as insects with chromatic exoskeletons and delicate waxed wings soar all around. A robin searches for worms, a woodpecker pounds away at the cottonwood. In this space of coalescing, I feel I’m receiving whatever it is so many understand to be Christ — not as a last name of some Middle Eastern man but as presence of serene spirit transcending any ideological presumption.

It was recently that I had a moment within this framework that spurred these baptismal thoughts as well as a reimagining.

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Seeing the Whales

Emily and I went down to Puerto Vallarta a couple weeks ago. We did so a bit on a whim, booking the tip with four days notice! Having a time-sensitive airline credit and a strong desire for warmth and sunlight, we found an Airbnb and, on a fairly meager budget, enjoyed the beach and the best el Pastor tacos.

There were a ton of highlights. The weather was incredible, the aforementioned tacos alongside other local foods we found wandering into the city a bit, as well as just the joy of experiencing a new place was fantastic and refreshing. But it was the stirring occurring out in the bay that really took things to the next level.

Puerto Vallarta in March is prime time for Pacific Humpback Whales.

Mating commences just offshore from the city. The males disappear after conception while the mother stays with her young. She helps acclimate them to swimming, breaching, and all things that come with being a whale.

My first interaction with these giants on the trip wasn’t something I saw, but heard. Reading at a spot overlooking the ocean, a loud thud caused me to look up from my book. Thinking it was just a jetski pounding by, I was surprised to see the massive form of a mother humpback sinking back into the sea. Moments later, her baby, awkwardly, followed suit. The jump likely being one of its first attempts, as its form floundered in comparison to its mother.

I set my book down and witnessed the action continue. Mother leaping, followed by about 3-5 calf attempts. I imagined them diving deep, only to turn around and press toward the surface — rising, rising, rising — until breaking clear into air and, if for only a moment, flying above the water.

There are lots of theories around the leaping whale behavior. Some include exercise, ridding of parasites that accumulate their faces, or for the fun of it. I can tell you watching it, the fun element is at the very least happening alongside the practical.

Emily and I decided to seek out a boat to watch the action a bit closer up. A fair amount of options to do so are not exactly the best. Massive vessels getting right up in front of the whales and possibly spooking the young. And although any tour might have its negatives tied to it, we did seek out one put on by a couple managing a smaller boat.

Thalia, who guided the tour, was a biologist. She had her masters degree in marine biology from a local university. She took pictures of the whales we saw for study and data collection. Her husband, whose name I didn’t catch, captained the boat and was mindful to never interfere with the natural course that the whales were on.

About an hour or so into the tour, we were out on a section of the water away from any other boats. Thalia let us know that she could see “mirror” on the surface of waves, indicating there were whales diving nearby. Her husband stopped the boats motor and we drifted on the surface of the sea, waiting.

No more than 15 yards from the boat, a whale breached. It was on the side I was standing on. A giant emerging from the unknown right beside me.

Before going back under, the whale released a sharp exhalation from its blowhole.

I watched as like buzzing little bugs, hundreds of thousands of droplets from its exhale spewed into the soft blue morning light; ocean and coastal mountain range as backdrop. Moments later, I was drenched by the contents of what it had just breathed out. The droplets arriving at my body at the same moment I took an in-breath. I remember this detail because I felt and smelled the saline contents of its exhale coat my nostrils.

Thalia laughed with the simple two-word acknowledgment, “whale mucus.”

Judging by its aroma and feel, it was mostly saltwater. I couldn’t make out any distinguishing mucus factor. There was no snotty, sticky stain on my clothes to consider. But it was all over me. What it had breathed out, I had breathed in. My nostrils now moist and lacquered with the smell and slight sting of a humpbacks sneeze.

I had been baptized in whale mucus.

Reimagining a Ritual

Perhaps one way to think about baptism is the act of becoming steeped — completely soaked and covered — by a presence. This could be literal or figurative; water from a chapel or the presence of some holy spirit.

If this is what baptism is, I find myself asking the question… What presence would I choose to be steeped in?

Rather than any baptizing into ideology, I’ve realized that I want to be steeped in the acknowledgment of kinship.

kinship: a web of relations

I want to be baptized into a recognition of my relation to the rest of the earth.

I want to be covered in the mucus of a whale. To have its out-breath as my in-breath. This exhalation and inhalation a reminder that where I end and a whale begins is distinguished by nothing more than a separateness melting away at the acknowledgment of eternity.

I want to be baptized into a remembrance that things become other things to become other things.

A whales exhale became my inhale. Sea water and mucus covered my skin — it found its way into my pours. The life of an oceanic creature, emerging for mere seconds, intersected with my terrestrial life. Is this not happening at all times?

Whale and man in one sense, this and that always.

Why do we miss that we are part of each other? Why are we so angry?

Historical notions of baptism beyond just the tradition of Christianity are all about purification — entering into the water as one iteration and emerging “cleansed” into the new. Set apart in the eyes of a Creator.

But what if instead of being some ritualistic cleansing into ideology… instead of being a move to set us apart… the practice of baptism became a choice to step into conscious connection with the other, with the earth? A move into enmeshment — not with tenant, doctrine, or creed — but with soil and sun, creature and landscape. The larger family of things.

Whether river, rain, whale mucus, sunlight, wind… my new notion of a baptismal rite is a receiving of the ways in which I am a part of the earth, not set apart from it. It is a bent toward becoming imbued into my inherent connection with the larger story of the living world and all its pieces; a story I often, admittedly, get distracted from acknowledging, living in realms of endless pavement and screen.

So, I’ll work to submerge myself in this presence as often as possible.

Through feeling rain on my flesh
grass on my toes 
wind in my hair. 

My hand petting my dog
my body holding my love 
the drangonfly landing on my forefinger.

The mucus of the whale
the song of the bird
the bark of the cottonwood.

Perhaps this ancient ritual into ideology could also be a ritual back into kinship with our planet.

Whether it be whale mucus or river water seeping into my pores, this cloaking otherness onto my me-ness is a reminder that what makes me who I am is seeping with landscape and species far exceeding the category of human Mike flesh and bone barrier. From dust we come, to dust we shall return. It all rises from the dust and it all rests back down into it.

Baptism, reimagined, could serve as a reminder of our collective connection. Not some rite indicating our set-apartness. John the Baptist would dunk people into the river. Perhaps we could all use a bit more of this. An old way of river to flesh. A reminder that both we and river are a journey from headwaters to mouth.

A reminder of that mystery… that I am the river and the river is me; that I am the whale and the whale is me. Whether whale sneeze in nostril and on skin, early spring sun warming the face, or river running through toes, may we be reminded of our kinship to a story playing all around us and inviting us to join in.