When I was little, my big sister Katey carried, snuggled, cooed at, tickled, and pushed me on the swing. She bickered with me over food, toys, attention, and pets. As a toddler, I looked up to Katey, fifteen years my senior. I wanted to wear her retainer and her big purple dress and go to high school with her. Katey taught me how to dance to Madonna and Michael Jackson and to appreciate animals. She always stopped to pat dogs and cackle at blue jays eating peanuts. Over the years, she volunteered at the Humane Society and the local nature center, and she cared for a small army of stray cats—including the latest additions, "Ted" and "Mr. T."
Now forty-three, Katey lives in a group home. She goes to work every day, where she assembles new teacher materials into backpacks. Every Saturday morning at 7:15 am, Katey walks to St. Bede's Church to prepare bag lunches for the homeless living on L.A.'s Skid Row. There are not many people—myself included—who, after a forty-hour workweek, will sacrifice their Saturday mornings to feed the homeless.
I asked her why she does it.
"It makes me happy," she said. "Once we went to the ‘St. Paul' [St. Vincent de Paul] shelter and had breakfast with some of the clients who we help. They all said ‘thank you. We all need help, I guess.'"
In many ways, faith entered our family through Katey. By her own admission, my mom grew up in a family where "there was never even a mention of God, except sometimes my father would say, ‘Goddammit!'" My parents also had a few unsavory encounters with Christians during Katey's childhood, when well-meaning churchgoers would suggest that Katey was born to "teach us all a lesson," or that it was somehow "God's will" for Katey to be born the way she was. True or not, these words from acquaintances were painful for my parents, who were struggling and confused, unable to believe that somehow Katey's suffering was the will of God.
Though my parents distanced themselves from organized religion, as Katey gained independence, she sought out church families. In fact, Katey has been baptized nearly three times: once as an infant at a Presbyterian church, once (almost) at a nondenominational church (her candidacy was rescinded when she could not remember their verbal statement of faith), and more recently at the local Catholic church. No one else in our family is Catholic, but none of us prevented her from joining. St. Bede's loved and embraced Katey from the start.
Katey cannot articulate nuanced doctrinal differences between one denomination and the next, but she understands what really matters. She gets love. She gets acceptance. She gets non-judgment. "I like being a part of St. Bede's," said Katey. "They accept people for who they are and there's no rejection: they accept people who use walkers and wheelchairs and me, and everybody cares for each other. And when somebody comes into the church, there's a lot of help and support."
To me, this sounds like the definition of a healthy, functioning church, modeling God's unconditional love and acceptance. Still, since I am in seminary, and since a question about the meaning of baptism just happened to pop up on my final exam, I couldn't resist asking Katey about some finer points of sacramental theology. When I asked Katey how many times she has been baptized, she replied, "I don't know. Two, I guess."
"What does it mean to be baptized?" I prodded.
"Well, baptism is when you get dunked and forgiven for all of your sins, and you join God's church." Sounds good to me. In fact, it reminded me of a passage from Frederick Buechner's Wishful Thinking:
Baptism consists of getting dunked or sprinkled. Which technique is used matters about as much as whether you pray kneeling or standing on your head. Dunking is a better symbol, however. Going under symbolizes the end of everything about your life that is less than human. Coming up again symbolizes the beginning in you of something strange and new and hopeful. You can breathe again.
At church, Katey has found a place where she can breathe again, where she can live out the things within her that are "strange and new and hopeful." Since we were on a roll, I decided to inquire about the second sacrament in the Protestant tradition: the Lord's Supper—or the Eucharist, as Katey's tradition would put it.
"What about the Eucharist—what does it mean?" I asked.
"The Eucharist means that you share in the body of Christ by having your piece of the wafer with everyone." Her voice grows solemn. "But I'm not sure how I feel about that other part."
"Do you mean the wine?"
"Yeah—that."
"Does it taste bad?"
"I don't know. I've never tried it. Anyway, it just matters that we are the body of Christ together."
Yes, Katey. That is what matters.
My mom once told me, "God is there in terms of how we respond to Katey." She sees God in the way that St. Bede's has responded to Katey, welcoming her into their community with open arms, giving her the opportunity to serve others. We all need to be received; we all need to give of ourselves.
Katey has Williams Syndrome, caused by a spontaneous deletion of twenty-six genes on chromosome seven. There are a number of symptoms and characteristics that come with Williams Syndrome—facial features such as a button nose, social gregariousness, musical giftedness, aortic stenosis, and cognitive challenges. Though all of these apply to Katey, she is so much more than the sum of this diagnostic checklist. Katey's trust in God and steady faith inspire me, and though our relationship has changed over the years, in many ways I continue to look to my big sister for reminders of what really matters.
Sarah Messner is a master of divinity candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary. She is married to Daniel Stulac (also a seminary student) and sister to Katey and David.
