"I'm babysitting this morning, so why don't you come over here?" my friend, Chele, invited when I telephoned her last week.

It was the kind of quiet Saturday morning we don't often get to share. She makes some of the best European-style coffee in my world, and her company and conversation are even more satisfying and flavorful. We became friends through our mutual love for children and what we both feel really matters most, the spiritual aspect of all of God's children, whatever their age.

The "baby" in question was actually her teenage daughter's charge, "Catie," a life-size, anatomically correct doll who had come home from school with her as part of a class assignment designed to help young people gain up-close experience with the non-stop responsibility of childcare. Chele's daughter had to work that morning, so Chele, as many grandparents do, had become the de facto babysitter.

Now, I knew about the eggs and plastic dolls that some high-school students bring home from similar classes. Students are required to carry these with them at all times (or arrange care for them, and obviously, the experience is bound to raise their consciousness about the demands and responsibility required when an infant comes into your life.

But technology has really upped the ante in this experience now. When I arrived at Chele's house, sitting beside her on the porch in a plastic carrier was a lifelike doll dressed in pastels — lifelike enough that I did a double-take when I first saw her.

Chele introduced her, the way she would any two beings, and I went through the motions of saying hello, though my brain registered something like: "plastic doll, object" and moved eagerly toward that good coffee. As I took my first sips, however, it was obvious that Chele's orientation toward this little bundle was considerably attuned. Frankly, it put a bit of a damper on that lively conversation I'd been looking forward to.

Having Catie here was surprisingly like having a real baby in the house, Chele told me. She'd even been cooing just minutes before I'd arrived. I did succumb to a rather insensitive thought at that point that Chele may have gone just a bit over the edge with all this.

Then little Catie started to cry. And cry.

The latest version of these "babies" comes equipped with what can only be described as stealth intelligence. In essence, they can go off like little alarms at any moment, which, of course, makes them lifelike indeed. A computer chip and motion sensor mean that this small companion needs (and internally monitors the intake of) regular physical nourishment. It registers whether you support its head and neck properly. It needs diaper changes (there are sensors there, too) and some time after taking in that physical nourishment, it develops the need to burp. And sometimes, as with all of life's wild cards, its cry is simply something that you can't quiet with a pre-planned solution of any kind.

So, that first time I heard Catie rev up, something tweaked my attention at a very deep level, kind of like rediscovering body memory that knows how to perform a task you haven't attempted in years. This cry was real. A recording, to be sure, but so genuine-sounding (and increasingly louder) that no one with hearing could remain unaffected by it.

Chele shifted and repositioned Catie in her arms about a half-dozen ways for what felt like 15 minutes (but was probably two). During this time, a neighbor actually stopped by on his way out to remark, over the din, that he hadn't even known there was a baby in the house.

Finally, Catie burped and quieted.

And she no longer seemed like a lump of plastic. My inner antennae had been activated — I could still feel them twitching. In less than 20 minutes, two midlife women had become the hostages of a small plastic doll, we chuckled.

Then Chele's husband called from where he was away on business travel, and Catie started up again. Chele changed the diaper whose color showed the need for replacement. But Catie kept crying, and Chele didn't have enough hands for the phone and Catie both.

As I reached for her instinctively, I was automatically focused on handling a baby carefully. Heaven forbid someone would flunk a course because I fumbled a plastic baby, or let it cry too long on my watch.

The same little rocking dance with which I paced with my own babies took over instantly, as did the soothing sounds, the molding of Catie's form against me, and the space into which I shifted. I call it the "being with" energy. I think of it as finding a center I know is always there, then simply acting from that space while imagining light from something much greater coming down on me and whoever is in the vicinity. It's the only way I ever found to help a baby quiet, because I have to be truthful and say that however much I love life and children, a baby's crying can be torture to the human nervous system. It calls for a kind of surrender that seems an inevitable portal to the way of prayer, if you want to avoid hysteria yourself.

The fleeting recollection crossed my mind that this was a plastic doll I was holding. But it was still crying, and this was all I knew how to do, and I figured it could at least get the two of us through one phone call I knew Chele wasn't likely to drag out.

By the time she hung up, Catie was quiet. Chele expressed her marvel, complimented my auntie skills. I joked that the battery must have run down.

Then I realized that what Catie's crying had evoked in me was an innate desire to communicate: "I see you, I hear you. You matter. I might not be able to make this better, but I'll stay with you." Fairly essential ingredients for any human relating.

These were always a part of that "being with" energy, and ultimately were a gift for me and child both, as they unfailingly brought us an at-oneness. The peace of that feeling wasn't from us directly, but through us, somehow. It always seemed to help each of us access that quiet, safe place that's always waiting for us, the one that seems to hold us at all times, whether we know it or not.

Babies and children help adults remember and reach for that place, of course — as long as we know and trust that it's there in the first place. Most of life's hardest tests invite us toward the same thing. It's the required surrender that often trips us up along the way, I guess.

"Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form when within thee the universe is folded?" Baha'u'llah reminds us in a little book called The Seven Valleys. There's a whole lot waiting right there for us when we turn toward it.

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Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © Copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.