On Faith & Baptism
Kate Newhouse

To the church:

    I write this now as I am preparing myself to be immersed in the frigid November waters of Bureau County Creek.  I willfully do this to affirm to you my God, that I really want to share with You this life and this experience.  Let me be your child, your daughter, my Father. . . I implore the spirit of the living Jesus Christ to become my Master and my Lord.  I desire to become an earthen vessel of your will and your love.  I desire to cultivate a deeper and deeper relationship with you Lord, so that I may see and know the spirit of Christ in myself and others, and to allow the Holy Spirit to work within me.  And so I make this public and private, external and internal, physical and spiritual action to symbolize the spiritual transformation that I am seeking and welcoming. 

    I am still a newcomer in my journey in seeking Christ, which began with the second spiritual awakening that I experienced in my life, about six years ago.  At this time I had been steeped in social and political activist/anarchist culture, and was truly finding a deeper calling for my life.  I was realizing that the world, and doing what was expected of me given my socio-economic  upbringing, did not offer me a pathway for the truth, meaningfulness, goodness and righteousness that I sought.  I whole-heartedly embraced the youthful counter-culture of  speaking out against things we didn't believe in, creating our own counter-culture community that operated on caring for and one-anothering each other in the spirit of cooperation and respect for the divine nature of Life and God.   So naturally from this point I starting seeking a spiritual significance for my life.  I reached out to people who spoke the real and living gospel, I tutored myself in the study of God's word, and I decided that I wanted to willfully give my life over to God . . . that I yearn for the presence of Jesus in my life, his divine grace, maturity, holiness and care.  But so often since making this affirmation and commit to the Lord, I find myself backsliding farther and farther away from his presence.  I get caught up in myself, my own ambitions, cares, whims and impulses that God have not given me, the same ones that separate me from God.  And so today I ask the Lord to rebirth me in my commitment to being faithful to Him, to purify my soul of my own evil, to mold me into a vessel for His will.
   
Prayerfully devoted to God in our witness
Prayer at baptism waters

    Lord, God, the Father. . . I come before you today stripped down, quieted, humbled, recognizing my follies and my brokeness, you know Lord, and I know Lord what these, where they come from, everything about me.  You can see through all my facades to my heart and my true intentions.  We recognize that some of what has become me is not good and not pure.  I desire today, Lord, a baptism of purification for my unrighteous wills and desires, for my wrongdoings and for my sins. . .  that You may cleanse the falsity and wickedness that I harbor within my soul, that these desires and ways that separate us from being together Father are washed clean from my soul by the living words.  Lord, let flow from me the parts of myself that separate me from truly knowing You, the ugly parts of myself that You do not want me to be.  I ask you to absolve from my intentions and thoughts my unrighteous and ungodly qualities: in specific the parts of myself that are sick, angry, spiteful, judgemental, inconsiderate and unholy. . .  wash me clean from these things Lord, and be with me to offer me your enduring and everlasting comfort and support so that I may give these up . . .  to let them flow out from my soul, mind and body, to let them be washed away with the current.  I ask you, the one true Lord, to fill the emptiness and hollow places that are left over with Your purity, Your love, Your wisdom, Your patience, Your mercy and Your strength.  I ask for you and yearn for you, Holy Spirit of the living God, to enter my soul and dwell within me, that I may be a servant of God, a devoted lover and servant to Christ, that I may become the woman that God desires for me to be.