Welcome back to the imagination redeemed podcast. My name is Brooke McIntyre and I'm so excited to be here. First of all said that I can wish you a Merry Christmas. And secondly because today I get to share a chapter by Marilyn McIntyre called The Art of naming that she contributed to the Anselm societies, why we create series now? Sadly, I am not actually related to Maryland. McIntyre despite sharing a last name, but I am a huge fan.
Marilyn McIntyre is a writer poet, professor and speaker and I like to think of her as a keeper of words. She's written several books, including caring for words, in a culture of lies and word by word, a daily spiritual practice. In this chapter, she talks about the naming role that God gave humankind.
This role allows us to look for the significance and the He's made to derive, meaning from them, and to join him and putting the finishing touches on things for which he obviously had a Clear Vision, she writes about how understanding naming not only allows us to better understand our relationship with the created order but also our relationship with God. The first Creator in the first name. ER so without further Ado, here is her chapter the art of naming
My daughter's. Remember a moment when we paused on a walk by a particularly beautiful Deep Purple stand of lobelia that's so pretty one of them said what's it called for some reason? At that moment I couldn't recall its name, I'm not sure. I replied a bit abashed, I'll look it up but her sister lept into the breach. I think I'll call it Ralph. She announced her decisiveness and clarity about the matter made us laugh.
And, and still does, when we happen to see a bit of lobelia in our family, I'm afraid it's still Ralph. Naming things is a particular pleasure. We Begin early with dolls dogs. Now and again, a caterpillar or a stray cat, which once it's been named becomes a candidate for adoption, even the smallest children, know that bestowing and name establishes a relationship and that being called by name and by sundry nicknames And endearments is a sign and seal of loving connection.
Many of them. Also know that when their full name is called first middle and last slowly and emphatically, they may be in trouble. The Namer has power, The Giver of the name, has a claim on the one named I have called you by name and you are mine, the Lord proclaims to his people in Isaiah. And that ringing Assurance is followed by a That reaches back to the Red Sea and forward to Jesus's, farewell to his disciples.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you to have been called by name is to be known, claimed loved and sustained. And also to have been summoned into a relationship with profound obligations and consequences. What's in a name naming comes up in the Old Testament? Almost 800 times in the hole. All of scripture, nearly 1,000 leaving little question as to
its importance. Given names signify character or commemorate life-changing encounters there, sometimes assigned by Divine mandate, your name is Israel, you shall call his name Ishmael or John or Jesus. And sometimes changed as a sign of conversion, Simon to Peter, Saul to Paul the earliest instance of God's consigning to The pleasure and power of naming comes in the second chapter of Genesis, and whatever the man called every living creature.
That was his name, the consequences of the gift of the power, to name for good and lll, continue to unfold, what we call things changes them. When we name something, we frame it, we assign it a place in the linnaean system of classification, or in a family lineage or in a social
hierarchy. We assign people to Titles and forms of address that come with access to property or privilege literal entitlement and we give stories titles that entice or suggest or foreshadow what will come to matter to us as we step through the looking glass or wardrobe and suspend disbelief to read them, is to give hours or days of our time to at the ancient quest to discover, what's in a name? Juliet's. Famous question.
What's in a name is followed by the self-serving argument that that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet but the question meant to dismiss the power of names.
Ironically implies its own answer, a lot lies in a name, a lot is at stake in her impetuous proposal to Romeo, to deny thy father, and refuse Thy Name. A lot is also at stake in her alternative option or if that It's not but be sworn my love and I'll no longer be a Capulet for one of these two young people to give up the family name for the other, would either end or intensify an ancient feud in this place.
Shakespeare, who fathomed and celebrated The Power of Words, as richly as any, who have wielded them lay is out the tragic potential of names when they become signifiers for whole histories of conflict. We have only to consider what has become of names like Jezebel orgy. Des Benedict Arnold or Uncle, Tom Shakespeare's comedies, on the other hand, turn our attention to the Artful playful
possibilities of naming. Usually by way of renaming, Rosalind becomes, Ganymede and Viola becomes Cesario changing not only their names but their gender to teach their lovers lessons playful. Though is not trivial here to a great deal. Hangs on the giving and taking of names. Us and the power, the women claim and renaming themselves for their own purposes.
Flirt, with danger in broaching, great cultural taboos self authorization, especially in women, is at best, unsettling to those deeply anchored in patriarchal traditions and at worst heretical. Not neutral entities, We see a variation on the same theme of self authorization in The Scarlet Letter, when Hester, Prynne finally, forgiven by her harsh, judges refuses to take off the label, they sentenced her to we're having in effect transformed.
Its meaning with hard-won irony, she turns her badge of Shame into a sign of contradiction defying church, and state by an act of retranslation. We see it again. In Toni Morrison's Unforgettable character. Latt in Song of Solomon. Who transforms her name, a male name resonant with betrayal and cowardice and redeems. It infusing it, with her own meaning on her own terms, indeed. The title of the novel itself. Entails a similar ironic reframing of the biblical love
poem Morrison's later novel. Beloved takes another, perhaps even deeper look at how naming or not naming can change the way. We look at both personal. And cultural history. Beloved a child killed by her mother to save her from enslavement goes to her grave unnamed, except for that one, descriptor which some readers have suggested stands for the many enslaved. People whose names have been forgotten but whose tragic history continues to break and break open the hearts of their
people. Among the many literary explorations of the power of naming Charles Williams. Arcane but gripping novel. The place of the lion, occupies a unique. If somewhat marginal place a favorite of several of the Oxford England's, the novel deals directly and disturbingly with a mysterious power that lies in naming. It is a naming, the forces of Destruction that Anthony the protagonist establishes dominion
over them. See, Louis is letter about the book to Arthur Greaves from February 26th 1936. The story reminds us lest, we moderns have forgotten that archetypes Angels platonic forms ideas themselves are forces at work in the world and that we negotiate with them at our Peril. They are not neutral entities, nor our words rather than simple. Sounds are indicators words are instruments. That control confine consign or perhaps enliven and Empower they
kill or heal. When we Speak them into the universe. There is an answer. Naming and claiming these stories and scores of others point us toward a question that should at least from time to time trouble. Our sleep. How do we use the power to name? And how might the creative work of renaming, help to bend the Arc of History tour, de Justice and the Arts of language towards truth.
How might any of us use that adamic authority to revitalize our relationship to the created order how might renaming restore what has been eroded or depleted of meaning and how are we to understand our responsibility for what we have called by name and made our own to take the last of these questions first.
I would point out that history itself rests on naming and claiming the way we think and talk about our own countries and societies is based on names that we have inherited often to the sometimes violent exclusion of others. We live in a world after Babel however, we Repeat that story. We must conclude that God has allowed. Our language has to be sundered, because of our pride, this was the fall of language, and in this Fallen World, there is
competition between languages. Sometimes quite brutal competition, all too often tyrants, exert, their power, by attempting, to rename something, and to destroy even the memory of the old names. As Christians, we have the ability and the obligation to look beyond the limitations of the naming. We see at work in our culture's, we must strive to see what in our culture's naming is true.
And what is taranis? Where is the name, an indication of reality and where is it an attempt to Veil reality? Sometimes, of course, a name can be both of these things. And that is where we must use Prudence to discern. How we use our power of naming to Injustice and true knowledge to our communities. The opposite of this virtuous naming is when we try to use names or renaming to exert power over reality rather than to discern and reveal a reality.
That is hidden, for example, throughout history. Humans have renamed regions as part of Conquest. Sometimes the renaming takes place by the stroke of a pen
sometimes by planting a flag. But always with solemn words that assign a new name, one that is often Recently, proprietary British East Africa, French West Africa, Belgian Congo Spanish, Guinea, German East Africa. This practice of coercive name, changing makes it easier for invading governments to impose unjust political and social policies explorers and colonizers assignment of names overlooked or ignored.
Not only the claims, but the names given to places indigenous peoples, inhabited including sacred lands, in the case of the examples above part of the process of establishing National Independence and addressing deep-seated, Injustice has been restoring old names. Kenya Senegal Niger, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rwanda, Mozambique just to name
a few closer to home. America is still wrestling with the lingering scars of the slave trade, which used an Aiming to dehumanize its victims, slave Traders, imported ships, full of newly nameless, people whose identities had been Stripped
Away to this day. Many of their descendants still carry the names of why White owners or ancestors, a daily, reminder, of a cruel practice that sought to subjugate and dehumanize an entire group of people addressing these past injustices, will require us to face this history of unjust naming right now in America. There are some efforts to do this. We are seeing waves of re Africanized names and restoration of indigenous tribal names for land. Naming non-human creation.
There is a similar movement in science right now. There are intriguing exhilarating controversial inconsequential, efforts taking place amongst scientists nature, lovers, conservationists preservationists and Poets to rethink the words, we English speakers have used for non-human beings. One of the more eloquent apologists for rethinking the way language links us to other
creatures is Robin wall. Camera, whirs, braiding Sweetgrass. Both a professor of Botany, and a member of the Potawatomi tribe camera, organizes. Her elegant Reflections around the central question of how to integrate the insides of empirical science along with European systems of classification, and naming with the insights of tribal peoples who have lived close to their lands for centuries, have known them intimately and have woven that knowledge into highly poetic sometimes elliptical
myths. And teachings. How for instance, might the rich creation story of the sky woman who created a garden for the well-being of all, be reconciled either with the Eden story or with the enlightenment infused strictly impersonal descriptive, nomenclature of Darwin, Von, Humboldt and Mendel, Kemmerer notes, that most of her graduate students invested as they are in learning have lost connection. She longs to restore when they put More energy into memorizing
Latin names. She observes they spend less time looking at the beings themselves. Kim a book is more Invitational than critical indeed. She expresses great respect for what she has learned in the lab from highly skilled plant scientists. But she also invites readers to a kind of humility that reaches to the root of that word hummus, which becomes a word for soil, humility calls us to return to our own.
Insensate Elemental relationship with soil, strawberries and squash not primarily as products to be purchased but is gifts given to be enjoyed in a context of gratitude and reciprocity. She uses words, like community and relatives to describe the plant lives with which humans interact and brings what one science writer called the tenderness of the scientific gays to bear on those beings. As It's and needs and strategies of survival in some native languages camera points out by
way. Of example, the term for plants translates to those who take care of us.
Imagine what might shift if we were simply to shift the pronoun, we use to describe a tree from what to who or spoke of cows rather than livestock, the culture of commodification seeks to drive, a wedge between our relationship with things as creatures in our experience of Those things as Goods it does this by introducing separate terms one set, the identifies living beings as creatures participants in creation and a whole separate set that identifies them as marketable
products. Jesus's parable of the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to find and rescue. The hundredth suggests a kind of caring that remains relational, even though Lambs were sold slaughtered and eaten. The use of the names sheep and lamb remind us that we have a relationship and responsibilities to these animals. Even though we may end up eating
them. Mapping the world, non-human beings have their own ways of being, even their own ways of knowing they have, as botanist Peter, woola been put it a hidden life knowing their secrets, takes time, and patience and some relinquishment of anthropocentric assumptions.
And this knowing requires, new words for an or poetic or sometimes fanciful to get at how other creatures are leafy protectors, and those throw called are A brute neighbors live and move and have their being Tolkien provided.
Some of that, in his sweeping story of a time when Middle-earth included many orders of living being dwarves, and Hobbits and elves, and ends, as well as humans, whose coexistence was a working relationship rooted in an understanding of complementarity, each kind of being in Middle Earth has a distinctive language. Its sounds, and Rhythm, and range of reference suited to their Your and work Elvin speech is marked by fluid loveliness
words and names. Like I knew Linda lay an aria do Nadine Galadriel, lothlorien nemuri, a and Tauriel are as close as language comes to music dwarves. On the other hand have consonant, Rich hard-edged words, like Xerox Eagle gabble Gothel, nuraghe and Baruch This is no accident, as both a philologist and a man of deep Faith Tolkien brought a sensibility to his work, that Drew upon the ancient Hebrew understanding of naming as something I would call in Christian terms, sacramental.
He also understood in conveyed, how words distinguish the way a people sees the world and what they care for Common words as well as names map out relationship with the world we live inside grammatical structures that organize and give meaning to what is given tolkien's, fiction and has more scholarly, fill a logical studies.
All point to a fact that should continue to inform our curricula linguistic diversity, like biodiversity is a prerequisite for a healthy Planet. Our complementarity and the patient nuanced work of translation. Keep us in a Of creative tension. As we work out, our means of production and our hopes for
peace. Known only by God clearly as tolki new in. As camera reminds us, we share this lovely fragile Earth. Our Island home with creatures who know things we don't in one of his unusually light hearted poems t.s. Eliot. Offers a reminder not to assume that the names we impose on those creatures are in any way a final measure of who's there. The opening lines of the naming of cats introduces, the problem, the naming of cats is a difficult matter. It isn't just one of your holiday games.
The speaker goes on, to explain with comic earnestness that a cat must have as he emphasized in all caps, three different names in addition to the sensible everyday names. A cat keeper, I hesitate to say owner might give a name that's peculiar and more dignified. I'd there is that name that no human research can discover, but the cat himself knows and will never confess. I quote here, the last lines of the poem with some reluctance since to do.
So offers a kind of spoiler when I'd rather you just hasten to your bookshelf or if you must the internet and spend a few delightful minutes with the entire poem. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, the reason I tell you is always the same, his mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation of the thought of the thought of the thought of his name. His ineffable affable Fe An affable deep and inscrutable singular name. The poem still makes me smile after many readings.
At the way, it takes Delight in lists and probable names and invention of. If an ineffable, it also, perhaps more importantly makes me remember when I see the neighborhood stray, cat touring, our garden, that there is a who they're known only to God and it Shores up my conviction that the same is true for us. The one who calls us by name knows that name, even though we ourselves do not Echoes of the word paying attention to words and their effects, upon the
material and spiritual orders. We inhabit is surely part of our calling as people of faith, more particularly it is a vocation for those Among Us who following a desire of the heart given at some early point in our Journeys, spend many of our waking hours with words when we sit at our desks moving words around. It is good to remember that. We do this work for. Or the glory of God in the fullness of Creation in every Community, there must be some who wrestle with words and meanings.
There must be some who excavate at am ologies as there must be archaeologists, who dig through layers of ancient soil to help link us to the cultures that have shaped us. There must be some who Ponder the shades of meaning between near synonyms. The difference between perplexity and confusion, for instance, or between settlement in occupation. There must be those who look upon brand names and AD copy with a jaundiced eye, in an informed understanding of how influencers turn meaning into
manipulation. And there must be many, who cherish the words we inscribe and life-giving liturgy, and poetry and prayer. Cherishing does not prevent us from reaching translating from time to time. Instead, it calls us to hold on to what is good to pay. Our tithe of do attention to Sacred texts as they summon us to lift up our hearts. And to join in the Joyful Noise of a thousand tongues that daily pray, their versions of Hallowed
be thy name. A line that begins in Aramaic with a summoning to hear the one sound that created all others. The reality of words is that they are always mere Echoes of the great word because of this speaking, true words begins and ends with listening You've been listening to a podcast of the Anselm Society in Colorado Springs. Our mission is a Renaissance of the Christian imagination.
We exist to help Christians, remember who they are to cultivate a deep awareness of their relationship to the great story and to bring that awareness home to their families and churches to find out more about us or to become a patron, please visit Visit and sell them Society dot-org. Thanks for listening. Visit and sell them Society dot-org. Thanks for listening.