What’s in a Name?

Stephanie Ford, Visiting Assistant Professor of Christian Spirituality
College Meeting for Worship/Jan. 27, 2002
Text: Isaiah 43:1-3a

What’s in a name? Well, ask any salesperson—of houses, cars, mountain bikes, industrial lighting—and she or he will tell you. Politicians of all stripes know the secret, too. It makes the customer, the client, the potential voter feel warm inside—known, valued. It’s reassuring to hear your name called—you and not someone else, like when you have been waiting to see the doctor. In that moment that your name is called, the possibility of comfort and a return to health beckon to you from a doorway. And then joy, that relief of hearing your name, when you have planned to meet your best friend in a crowded airport or bus station. You are listening with all of your sensors attuned to hear a certain set of phonemes that have been gathered in that unique arrangement that is your name and given to you at your birth. Or maybe your “real” name came later, but still, it has attached to your person-ness for a long time.

It is kind of a strange thing when another person has your name. Someone says, “Stephanie,” and I look around and see that the name was meant for someone else. I look for the other Stephanie: “Is she like me?” Is she what a “Stephanie” looks like? I sometimes even think: “Could she be connected to my soul, as my own name is?”

One of the things that I like about Earlham is the first name basis we use. While it sometimes occludes the reality of power relationships, it also has the possible effect of reducing the bias, even a bias that is good. My name at Earlham is Stephanie. I could be Stephanie, a student; Stephanie, a librarian; Stephanie, a data entry clerk; Stephanie, a professor of many years standing. Or perhaps my colleague Stephanie, your former campus minister who is now a member of the faculty at ESR. You might guess certain things about my status from my age, but the mystery remains. And even after you get to know me, the first-name basis is there to remind each you and me about what is most important—not degrees, status, or power. Hopefully, you and I will be able to see the person and the soul before us. Namaste! I speak your name. I honor the soul in you!

For, truly, as we heard in scripture today: “In the beginning was the Word, and that Word came and dwelt among us.” And later, much, much later, another word was whispered into the darkness—and here you are, and here I am. All different words, it is true, but the same Voice. The Hebrew word for it is dabhar or “God spoke.”[1] Since the beginning, Genesis tells us, God has been speaking. God has spoken generously, words whispered into tiny amoebas and giant sequoias, words echoing among the galaxies, words calling life into being.

I first realized the preciousness of a person’s name when I taught English in Mainland China in the 1980s. My students at the Beijing Coal Mining Management College were middle school teachers from coal mining towns and cities in Northeast China. One day, I think to help me out with my dis-ease in pronouncing their names, they asked me if they could take American names for my English class. It was interesting to watch as they searched high and low for the right name. They looked in their grammar books, listened to English-speaking radio, and searched their dictionaries. A hard job! My assumption was that they would choose names that had a similar meaning to their own, but that was not they thought most important. It was the sound they wanted to match!

A tall, quiet man, Jin, proudly announced his American name as we went around the class: “Jingle!,” he declared. He told the others that he had heard it in an American song—and you could tell he was quite satisfied that he had been able to pick out such a close set of phonemes to his own Chinese name. As you can imagine, I had to stifle a giggle—but no one else thought it funny. They were quite impressed, too! And I had to make a quick decision, one I think God helped me to make. I did not say anything, but calmly smiled. “Jingle,” I repeated, and we continued on around the class. Later, I pondered. Should I tell him more about the word, tell him that he might get a laugh if he said it to other Americans? No, it came to me, his was a prized find. It would be for our class. And he would not likely meet many Americans in his small coal mining town.

A name is indeed precious! Consider the story of your own name. How did you get your name? What do you like about it, or not—how has it become apart of you? My mother tells me that I was almost named, Bettie, for my grandmother and aunt. Many of you are probably too young to remember Jerry Ford’s administration, but you have probably heard of his wife, Betty Ford—and the Betty Ford Centers. I was in 7^th and 8^th grades when Ford was in office, and being Betty Ford would not have been easy thing for my shy teenage soul! Yet even though I am not called by the name, “Betty,” knowing the story of my possible name has always given me a special bond with two women I deeply admired. My grandmother Bettie was as independent as they come. On her own, in her late twenties, she boarded a “slow boat for China” to teach mathematics at a girls’ school. And then there is the connection to my aunt Betty, who was also a math teacher. Friends told me at her funeral that she stayed late at her office many a night to help students struggling with higher math. Both were women of adventure and compassion! I attach these qualities to that name. Yes, I think I could have grown to like the name “Betty.”

But in fact, I really like my name, Stephanie. My father chose my name, after meeting a little girl named “Stephanie.” It is the feminine version of Stephen, who was the first Christian martyr. It has a regal meaning: “Crown.” My name, Stephanie Anne, my father would say, meant “crown of grace.” My sister, Rachel Lynn, “lamb by still waters.” We had a bit of poetry to grow up on!

Sometimes, though, our own names may to come feel alien to us. Or a nickname we once enjoyed, now makes us feel childish in our adulthood. We may even have a name that becomes painful for us to hear because of past associations. Or a new name that we find, suits us better. We call the new name with a sense of hope and joy.

Names also carry the beauty of the individual; yes, they say something about the eternal spark within each one of us. In that way, the search for the truest meaning of you our own name may be the most important work you ever do with your life. Last week at meeting, John Newman made a wonderful observation to you who are college students, that you should choose your vocation thoughtfully because you are going to spend a

lot of your life doing it. Yes, he is right. But I would add—that a vocation becomes hollow if you don’t keep searching for what your name really means in, through, and beyond it. Your name may be deeply intertwined with your vocation, but the “being” who is you—this is what’s most important! Vocations will come and go. You may find yourself in a vocation that you love for five or fifty years, but your truth is much more. Your name may be found in an avocation, your hobbies, what you read, where you travel, in the words of a friend you make while doing a semester abroad in Mexico or India. You may hear your name loudest on a mountain climb. You may find your spark growing in relationship, like the discoveries in parenthood and community. Your name speaks of vocation, but much, much more.

In his book Between the Dreaming and the Coming True, Robert Benson describes what it means to be individuals created with a sacred purpose. “When it came time for me to make choices (of what I would do with my life), I should have been wrestling with another question. I should have been asking, ‘What am I going to be when I grow up?’ What I then went on to do with that should have been a reflection of who I was to be, a reflection of the word that was whispered into me. I should have been looking for work to do that would sustain and nurture who I am.

I was then, and am still, the only person on earth who has any clue at all as to what was whispered into me in the depths of my mother’s womb. Everyone else is just guessing, and their guesses are a lot less well informed than mine. God whispered the word Robert into me, no one else. If I do not hear that word, no one will. If I do hear it and fail to act upon it, no one will be the word called Robert that God spoke. What we do is meant to be lived out of the context of discovering and becoming the person we are.”[2]

Listening for the name that God has spoken in you is a bit like watching a plant grow from a seed. It involves surprise, as well as familiarity. Individuation is what Carl Jung calls it. Seeds of the same species may look alike at first—unless you are a microbiologist—but then as the sprout emerges, we begin to see the unique pattern of the plant, it’s own particular beauty.

I have really grown to love a couple of the trees outside of Lilly Library, on the west side. The trunks and limbs twist in shapes that reach to the sky, the white patches of bark glisten in the rain. They are offerings of beauty that simply proclaim, “I am what I am” “I am being a tree.” Inside the library, we feel so smart and powerful, but as I pore through others’ words in search of ways to make better my own words—I wonder looking at the dancing arbors outside the window if I have really paid enough attention to the word within, deep within my soul, my name, my being!

I believe God speaks to us by name, sometimes in whispers that require time alone, time to breathe, times of writing or dreaming, or waiting in the dark. Sometimes loudly, in the voice of a friend or mentor, a professor, or a minister. Sometimes in the arguments we have with ourselves, when we are being hard on ourselves. Because sometimes in those moments, we hear another Voice within saying, “It’s O.K.”—what you have done or not done is not the whole of who you are. You are more than this moment; this feeling; this exam, or that paper. Try again. Take the steps again. We hear it in the words from Isaiah, “I have called you by name and you are mine. Even when you pass through the difficult times, I will be with you. Trust me.”

Rabbi Zusya from the Hebrew wisdom tradition once said, “In the world to come I shall not be asked: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ I shall be asked: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” God’s gift to the world is that he created each of us, God created you as a gift to the world. Listen to your name. You have been called by God. You are precious!