what's in a name?

be like a Thou, make wild tracks, practice resurrection

She sees a sunbeam—she naps (apologies to Emily Dickinson)

Ned, remember one woman’s name challenge, I thought to myself as Ned¹ remembered the names of the two men I sat with, but not mine—and as he told the story about the Latina lady that made him tacos (“she” was her name). And as he called on a student— “you” he called the girl with the long braid.

Pronouns were made for this guy.

Honestly, it made it bearable to listen to Ned’s voice to pretend that this was a drinking game (I was empty-handed) and the goal was to drink every time Ned said a woman’s name (no need for alcohol—he never will!)

Ned reminded me of the nicest person I know, except that everything in his being—rather than oriented toward gentle, Fred-Rogers-like pedagogy—seemed instead pushed into forcing a very limited paradigm of existence onto this wild, untameable world. Like trying to fit the wrong lid on a tupperware: oppressive pedagogy for the repressed.

His energy seemed concentrated in maintaining a tight, pasted-on smile and informing children that the most joyful thing in the world was talking about God. At the time, I noted Ned didn’t seem particularly joyful, and I wasn’t hearing a ton—I must say—about God.

If God were a woman, it occurred to me, Ned definitely wouldn’t remember her name.

I would like to say you can always tell when someone is trying very hard to live in an ideology. But you can’t. People are inscrutable, much like the divine. But what I’m trying to describe is the sort of strained aura a certain strand of fundamentalist folks have about them: like every muscle in their body is dedicated toward sifting out the inconvenient data around them that might challenge them to learn, and think, and grow. Their religion—whether it’s Christianity, the Bible, a certain guru, or a political figure—is seen as a bulwark against pesky things like critical thinking and self-examination, rather than an impetus to both.

Growing is scary, I’ll give Ned that! It’s much easier to force everyone to believe what you believe than it is to try to understand why someone thinks differently than you. Word on the street is that ignorance is bliss. They’re out here saying that for a reason, you know. It must be, in some ways, much more relaxing than grappling with the truth all night like Jacob. But some things might get lost along the way: the names of women, for example.

So many among us have become used to being looked over, seen through, made invisible. We are taught that some humans are more important than others, some skin colors safer, some needs more valid, and only some voices worth listening go. But that is not how God sees. That is not how any artist sees: creative vision—the eye of an author—pays attention to every last detail: not one more important than the others. How can you see God if you can’t see the image of God in your neighbor?—that’s how God sees them.

There’s a whole universe outside your mental circle of safety is blooming into sunsets and tulip season and newborn calves and humans, just waiting for you to want to see them as God sees them.

Ideas create idols, said Gregory of Nyssa, only wonder leads to knowing. Some translate it as: Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. Basically, what the good mystic Gregory saying is: God—or truth, or really anyone or anything—will best be understood by the part of our brain that opens up with amazement and marvels rather than the part of us that sifts and boils down and sets up solid ground to stand on that’s really just sand. Things are always changing: if you try to pin them down, well—do you really understand the dead butterfly in the box better than the one flapping over the Queen Anne’s Lace?

Only just a few hours before I became another anonymous woman in Ned’s monologue, I had a moment of wonder, feeling the sunlight on my skin, feeling the blood pumping through my veins, discovering the feeling of being alive.

Sometimes I look at a man or a cat lying next to me and I can’t believe that they, too, are alive, their own centers of consciousness and gravity, they can feel their heartbeats from the inside, too, and reach for the home movies at the back of their optic nerves, seeing life through a lens of memories known only to them. What a thrill it is to be inside a body—delicate skin, this viscous mob of cells known as blood running through our veins, feeling our breath deep within us, all the way down to the outer planets of our toes. We do all this living, but we can’t even see the face we put on it—except in a mirror, or, on a clear day, reflected in someone’s eyes. It kind of ruins you to actually feel what living is. It seems like something you should never really get over.

I am generally suspicious of ways of thinking that promise to be a panacea that soothes all our wondering and answers all our questions. Why are we so eager for truth to be a straight-jacket? Jesus describes it as an artesian well: unstoppable, endlessly generous, wild, generating something new every second. Something impossible to predict, unstoppable, you can harness it, but it’s running the show.

Knock on a door? Do you dare? Do you dare to risk an encounter with God—a God who will always arrive at your doorstep in a new disguise each day? A God who insists that nothing is unclean—that your neat systems of where to find him are confounded. I’d take my sandals off before I enter. What if encounter—a meeting between I and Thou, not him and her—was the heart of the world?

I remember first hearing that Pope John Paul II was holy because he looked at each person like there was no one else in the crowded papal auditorium who needed his time. But, of course, this is said of many holy people. One begins to deduce, after a time, that this kind of radical attention to everyone—not looking over their shoulders to find the more important person in the room—is constitutive of holiness. This seemed to me, as a child, a low bar to clear. Now that I am older, I realize that askesis of seeing is everything. Blessed are you, I imagine, if every last person you meet reveals God to you. Even Ned?

As Ned called on students named and unnamed, I pulled out my Wendell Berry book. Opening it was like remembering there was a Narnia while the Queen of the Underland strummed and thrummed: I felt a golden beam radiate from the extremely haphazardly bound pages. Ah, someone’s talking sense, finally. Berry spoke about the soil, spoiled by greed and ignorance; Berry talked about food as something we are all a part of, something we are all producers of, as humans—made of humus, the dust of the earth and the breath of God. Berry saw systems—ways of life that men had chosen that could be otherwise (timshel)—and we could choose those other, better ways. Berry spoke about the real world, and who we are to it.

Good words, solid ideas—grounded and real—are re-generative like agriculture. You find yourself refreshed after reading, like you just touched grass or drank living water. You find yourself a little more human—feeling your toes reaching down into the soil in which you came—the hum of a universe where every thread is meant stirs through you. What a symphony, what a lark.

You’re addressed as a person—you, the reader!—because Wendell Berry thinks you are important enough to hear something that he thinks is important—and he desperately wants you to hear it. Your ears perk up and the small of your back relaxes, back in your body, breath running through you: to pick up your book and enter the conversation—like someone has called your name.

Dear girls, my friends/ may you find great love within you /starlike and wild/ as wide as grass, solemn as the moon/ I will pray for you, if I can

Kathleen Norris, “Little Girls in Church”

1. Obviously, not his real name.