Big day for a little man

My little button of a nephew, BabyG

Coming from a fairly new country, lacking in historical traditions, I am sometimes perplexed by the little rituals and expectations that I encounter on my travels. Particularly, I find Catholicism a mix of awesome (the fantastic churches),  icky (saintly body parts?), out-of-touch (rules around contraception and divorce, homophobia), deceptive (sexual abuse) and misogynist (where do I start??).

Although the BIL's family is Catholic to the core, there was a serious disenchantment that occurred when the Bishop refused to sanctify Sistasana's marriage (she has been married before) or allow the couple to marry on any Catholic property. This last directive came down from above just four days before the event, resulting in a last minute panic and change of venue. Just to rub it in, the Bishop then also banned the local Catholic priest, who is a family friend, from facilitating the service in any venue, or from even being in the vicinity (in case this accidentally suggested God's approval, maybe?). Luckily, the Baptist pastor from St Gallens, Switzerland (Ernst) was fully ready to strut his non-Catholic stuff, both as marriage celebrant and, on Sunday, at the dedication of the first offspring. He didn't even bat an eyelid that this is obviously a miracle child that gestated for only 7 months. :D

As Baptists do not do anything similar to a Catholic 'christening', with holy water and so on, they improvised with props such as a large squishy globe on which Ernst pointed out New Zealand, and by coming up with some English songs, like 'he's got the whole world in his hand'. I generally am not a fan of churches, or religion, but this was a sweet service and being mostly in German, was very bearable. I joked to Sistasana that if they started 'speaking in tongues' I wouldn't even notice.  As a teenager I experienced some really radical, scary and pushy churches and even a sniff of religious fanatacism still makes me want to run away screaming that I'm in the presence of evil, save me god.

Nothing happened in this service to tweak my 'weird-o-meter'. The important people - Sistasana, BIL, BabyG, Gotta (Godmother - Me), Götte (Godfather - Sigmund) and Miss J, went up on stage and an enthusiastic prayer was said asking for God's protection and blessing over BabyG. The Baptists in St Gallens are not into ponderous, they seem to be into grinning and.. wearing sandals with socks. Although I tend to feel that babies are naturally spiritual, it was very moving to have Ernst raving on about the wonderfulness of babies. Certainly I agree 100% with celebrating the arrival of a newbie to the family.  After the service we went downstairs to the church coffee bar, which is an innovation that I would recommend to all churches, everywhere.

Being a Godmother is a very big deal over here, even if in this case, we do not have the official piece of (Catholic) paper to certify it. My job is to look after BabyG's spiritual progress (what were they thinking??). I was seriously, really seriously hoping that I did not have to oath or promise to help him be Christian. It would have been a super embarrassing moment. I am also Miss J's 'Godmother' (unofficial) and have reinterpreted the role as helping them learn to live their own truth and be good, non-judgemental people. That seems important. Or, perhaps, we could all just imagine the word 'fairy' in front of my new job desciption?

Excuse photo quality, I was trying to be secretive, shoot from the hip, not use flash.

After the post-church caffeination, we all headed off to continue festivities at an Austrian restaurant that serves up a fantastic Argentinian menu. The meal did involve a fair amount of vino in the middle of the day. By the end of it, I was definitely feeling my Fairy Godmother wings!

Here are some pics from lunch at Patagonia Argentinisches Steakhaus:

The size of the steak knife suggested big things were to come

The 500g steak. You order the steak by weight and then add whatever you want to eat with it.

My meal - a 200g steak with broccoli and wild rice. Unpictured - both Champagne and a fine Malbec (one for each hand..).

The mushroom sauce that I ordered with my meal. I love it when the sauce is not already all over the food. It's a sign that they know the sauce is a condiment to enhance the already tasty food, not there as a cover-up.

The man of the moment and his Granddaddy (Opi).