It wasn’t unusual that a newborn as dangerously premature as he was would receive massive medical attention.
What was extraordinary was the religious intervention he received along with it. Within moments of birth the infant had been set on a path of his own.
The boy once went into an altered state during a formal ceremony. Maybe it was a trance. Maybe it was a sign. It might have been blood sugar. It was something.
The boy filled cigar boxes with holy cards showing saints and Bible stories. His favorite was the Love-Thy-Neighbor card. But one that disturbed him showed Abraham ready to kill his son before a beautiful angel happened by. The boy prayed he could be forgiven for not believing that card.
After reading about Hester and Dimmesdale in high school, he decided to keep his distance from fancy praying and from the very pious, He wondered how so many religions could be the “one true” religion.
He came to think of that quiet voice, the one that only he could hear, as a special gift he had been given in the delivery room.
He had received his first Christian sacrament at the hands of the attending physician on duty that night. The neonatologist who baptized him happened to be of an entirely different faith. The boy had been baptized by a Jew, who performed the ritual flawlessly.
