What's in a name?

I’ve started a new book this week, and I think you can probably expect it to inspire more than one blog post over the next couple of weeks. The book is called And It Was Good: Reflections on Beginnings and is written by Madeleine L’Engle of A Wrinkle in Time fame; and in it she reflects on the creation stories in Genesis with a particular focus on the One who created.

In the third chapter, L’Engle talks about the importance of naming. This, according to her, is a topic that pops up in most of her writings, which she attributes to her name being “taken away” when she was twelve and in boarding school. She was called 97, rather than her name.

She notes that one of the first tasks with which Adam and Eve are charged is naming. Naming, she says, is what makes these creatures real. It’s what makes us real and able to interact with one another. It’s what makes us known to others. As an example, she questions how strange it would be if when we introduced ourselves to one another, we used our social security numbers rather than our names, saying, “if we don’t take care…society may limit us to numbers.”

Now, to be fair, I think that may be an extreme statement by someone who has been traumatized by being reduced to a number; but it got me thinking. Each day during this crisis, the news has reported numbers – the number of people infected, the number of people hospitalized, the number of people that have died. These numbers continue to rise, and we continue to watch them – feeling whatever it is they make us feel. We continue to feel sad or angry or empathetic or indifferent; but to those of us watching the news, it boils down to numbers.

I’m not suggesting that the news needs to find a way to report the names that go with each of these numbers, but I am suggesting that we take a moment when we see these numbers to think of the named ones that they describe. “When we respond to our names,” L’Engle says, “or call someone else by name, it is already the beginning of a community expressing the image of God. To call someone by name is an act of prayer.”

So, let’s take a moment in the midst of whatever it is that these numbers make us feel to say a prayer for those whose names we may never know. Let’s be a community that expresses the image of God by recognizing those whose names have been stripped away by tragedy and global crisis. 

Creator God, these are your children – each one made in your image and known intimately to you, each one worthy of a name and worthy of being called by name. We lift them up to you. Call them by name, and make them whole, we pray. Amen.