"nouveau is used to mean that something has changed, while neuf indicates that something is newly-made."
"Baptism, from Greek βαπτίζω (baptízô), is a religious act of purification by water usually associated with admission to a Christian church. Although the primary meaning of the Greek word for baptism is dip or plunge, the term was used also historically to mean perform ablutions.
The Christian ceremony of baptism evolved from the Jewish tradition of purification by immersion in a ritual bath. John the Baptist performed baptisms "for the remission of sin" and Jesus and his disciples seem to have inherited this tradition from John. After Jesus' death, however, Christians began using the ceremony of baptism as an initiation rite into the Christian faith, symbolizing dying to one's old self and being "reborn" in Christ. Since then, baptism has come to play a key role in the sacramental tradition of Christianity, and various Christian traditions of baptism have evolved among different denominations.
In a broader sense, the word "baptism" can also be used for any ceremony, trial, or experience by which one is initiated or purified."
purify
Verb
[-fies, -fying, -fied]
1. to free (something) of harmful or inferior matter
2. to free (a person) from sin or guilt
3. to make clean, for example in a religious ceremony
to free from sin or guilt
to free from sin or guilt
"By doing so you have emphasized that Matthew was a human being with all the rights and responsibilities and protections of any citizen of Wyoming." -Denis Sheppard, Father of Matthew Sheppard, as he addressed Wyoming government. Matthew Wayne Shepard was a gay American student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and subsequently murdered near Laramie in 1998.
free from sin or guilt.
a purified soul, a baptized soul, will not hungrily hold boundries, will not fearfully draw lines, will not find the differences between human beings as terrifying as the cold pushing of ocean water eating our shores, will not be afraid of assimilation: a purified soul will know the individual spirit of each human being is the glorious gift of our life here on Earth, but the connective tissues that produce our very humanity are our ability to relate to one another, to care for one another, to pull briars from our children's hair because we know what pain is ourselves; we must grant freedom and rights to our fellow human beings black, gay, woman, man in order to free ourselves: we are born sinless, guiltless, and those of us who impose authority on other human beings out of intellectual stagnation, fear and emotional smallness are making our own short lives smaller, further away from anything Christlike, Buddha like or humanist: what we grant to others we brand on ourselves.
i pray in 2009 we move closer toward each other.
xo maggie
