To Be Found Naked

Lake Ontario - so much water!

The past 15 years I've been attracted to the sense of nakedness. Oh my gosh, you say. No, not that kind. The nakedness of Genesis, where suddenly aware of their natural state, but guilty of their act of eating the forbidden fruit, the first parents try to hide from the God who knows all. Pretty stupid, I say. But then, when we try to cover things up, it is quite obvious to all what we are doing. We tend to be the only ones fooled.

Nakedness as finding the truth, yes, that is what attracts me. And with that thought, I'd like to return to the thought of water, to its life giving properties, and its destructive ones as well. Olivier Clement writes of baptism that the water we are immersed in is a sort of tomb. The water closes over the neophyte like a tomb. For the tomb to become a womb the Holy Spirit must supernaturally intervene. The Spirit given 'from above' brings the human being to a new birth, clothing with incipient but real light the whole being, the heart, the mind, the desires, all the faculties, the very senses (Roots of Christian Mysticism, 104).

The thought is consistent with nakedness, as well as water. To be naked in scripture is to be without pretense, which means we are grasping truth. To be baptized means we are throwing off the old and putting on the new. What Clement suggests is that what is clothed is the heart, the mind, the desires, etc. with the light of God. Quite a thought.

Baptism also addresses how to channel water from destructive to fruitful: the Holy Spirit. The very water we are practically drowned in (in some rites) becomes the vessel for the Holy Spirit to descend (better than a life guard, even the most athletic one). For the Spirit doesn't come to save us. He comes to sanctify. To cloth us with light, a transparent light that reveals, not covers.

Now do you understand my attraction?