What’s In A Name?

I have been the health officer for the last two years (and an assistant before that).  In a summer and three (working on four) semesters I have become quite efficient at the art of health forms.  It’s a science.  I start at the bottom and scan for food allergies or other pertinent notations and then move up to medications.  If I see any health related pieces which I would need to attach to a personhood, I THEN look at the name. Due to my position, I come to know campers by their medications, food allergies, and tendencies to wet the bed. (Unfortunate, I know).

So it was odd, almost peculiar really, when I spotted it.  A child with no medications, no allergies, and not a single checked medical history box to speak of.  But there it was. My name.  A camper was coming with my name!  Anika.  Ironically, Anika K.  I was ecstatic!  I love my name and I love that it is a unique name, but it is also exciting to be able find some one else who shares the inability to find monogrammed pencils. (Even if she is merely a fifth grader I will know for only a week).  Yet, I stopped in my ecstatic tracks.  The fact I saw the name amidst my 125 forms seemed odd… it didn’t fit my pattern.

And then it occurred to me.  Oh so simple.  The answer for why I had managed to see her name scrawled against the top of a paper I never would have otherwise stopped to consider seemed obvious…

You come to recognize the name by which you are called.

You know your name.  You recognize your name.  When you see it, you take note.  When you hear it (or, in my case, you think you hear it…) your ears perk up to see who is talking to you or about you.  A name becomes an identifier for your own personhood and when you see it, hear it, you subconsciously and mostly unknowingly attribute it to yourself. 

And I’m coming to realize we do this with our “other names” as well. 

Not other names in that your name is William but you go by Billy.  (Or Mike for that matter!) But the names, the labels, the identifiers…the ones our family calls us, our friends call us.  The names we call ourselves…  The things the world may tell us we are. 

And these we come to recognize, for good or bad, as well.

I talked to a camper once who everyday wore something different which read “Princess” on it.  I mentioned it one day and she replied with a giggle so matter-of-factly “of course! That’s my name!  Or at least that’s what my daddy calls me!” To her, wearing “princess” was like wearing a monogrammed sweatshirt!

Most of us don’t wear our “other names” quite so boldly or proudly, however.  The older I get and the more people I talk to, I mean REALLY talk to, the more I KNOW everyone has a pocket full of nametags they put on the t-shirt, underneath of the sweater so no one will see.  But they have to wear it, because they have come to believe it to be true…

We come to recognize the names by which we are called…

And our ears perk up just the same.  For good, for bad, or for ugly.  We may recognize with a smile or cringe with a frown…but part us hears words, the words both written on the nametags we place on our resumes and hide in our journals.  We hear them and with the rest of the world listening on as if nothing strange was said, our insides are screaming…

“This is me…” 

And yet and still, most of us scoff.  “What is in a name!” we cry.  “It’s just a word!  It doesn’t define them!  It’s not all of who they are!”

Hubert Humphrey once said “In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears.  Things are not only what they are.  The are, in very important respects, what they same to be.”

And I find this to be true.  Not always because it needs to be but because it is claimed.  Often for ones self or if not, by someone else, and so it becomes true.  “I’m not ugly.  But I believe myself to be ugly.  Others believe me to be ugly.  I become ugly.  I am ugly…”  It’s a sorry progression and an unfortunate reality. 

Because you see, whether your name be “Ugly” or “Beautiful”, “Good” or “Bad”, “Leader” or “Follower”, “Self-Starter” or “Couch Potato”…or any number or level of name before, after, or in between, the answer to a question of “what is in a name?”  Can simply be stated: “A lot”.

It’s one of those things we know but often neglect to remember, to recall, to remind.  There is much found in a name and the roots are much deeper than the surface.  We come to claim labels as names and we come to recognize the names by which we’re called. 

It becomes a dangerous reality.  For I know the other “names” I recognize as quickly as “Anika” written a top of a page.  Some of them are names never spoken.  Names I’ve called myself when it is just ‘Myself’ to face.  Some are names I’m not proud of.  A couple are actually quite special in their own right…  But, though I will answer affirmatively if any of them were called, none of them are truly me.  Those names I have come to recognize are not my truest identity…

There is much in a name, not the least of which is power.  Power to build or destroy, to bless or to curse, to leave desolate or to find filled. 

I’m reminded of a sheet full of verses from my old (very old! As I only was in a youth group in 6^th and 7^th grade) reading “Who Am I?” at the top.  The list was filled with labels, with identities, with names.  Names which bore both power and purpose.  Names which claimed me and redeemed me.  “I am a slave of righteousness” (Romans 6:18).  “I am God’s possession” (2 Corinthians 1:21-22).  “I am God’s workmanship” (Ephesians 2:10).  “I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing” (Ephesians 1:3).  “I am not the great ‘I Am’, but by the grace of God I am what I am…” (Exodus 3:14, John 8:24, 28, 58 and 1 Corinthians 15:10).  And the list goes on and on…

Those are names to recognize.  For they are they names by which God calls us.  Calls us to and calls us by.  And what a life and transition the world would make, if we came to recognize that those were the names by which we are called…  

Value, Worth, and Throw-Away People

Ever torn apart your garage?  Or your basement? Or that one space in your attic?  Even if it is relatively organized, it still becomes the catch all for things misplaced and unused, stored and forgotten. Sometimes, really, the more organized it is, the more dangerous it becomes.  If it looks clean and put together, there is no need to sort through boxes of old kid toys, Christmas decorations, magazines, and yarn balls.  But then, sometimes, you must…

Such was a task we took on a couple of weeks ago as a staff.  We tore out every box, misplaced crate of craft supplies, and unconsidered Frisbee from underneath the forum…our “OE basement”.  Typically relatively well maintained with classes in boxes and labeled shelves and corners for most things to belong, it was time.  Time for an overhaul. 

We unpacked boxes to make sure everything had just what it needed and nothing it didn’t…

We created piles of legitimate garbage and others of questionable trash…

We wiped shelves and swept floors and unloaded old plastic milk crates filled with everything no one once-upon-a-time put away correctly.

We reevaluated every box of rocks (Literally.  We run an Outdoor Education program. We have boxes of rocks!) and mocked old posters.

And we fought.

Now, I love my coworkers.  I appreciate their personalities, their work, their dedication, their passions for ministry and their subsequent desires and abilities to feed into lives and to impact beyond the mere scope of their jobs.  But that doesn’t make them perfect.  (Please consult 94% of any of my previous blog postings if you’re looking for me to confess I am also not.  This is a point I will eagerly admit.  Fit me into the mix.)  And so it also doesn’t make us a perfect team. 

We fought. 

And argued. 

And belittled…each other, perspectives, knowledge, opinions.

A team of leaders…many head strong and opinionated…were all right.  And each more right than the others. 

We can be a GREAT team.  We lean and depend on and support each other in impossibly important ways.  But, it turns out if you want true colors of teamwork to show…you ask our team to…sort.

Yes.  Sort.  Organize.  And especially…throw away.  That’s what we fought about.  That was the starting point for every spat.  What did we keep, and what did we throw away?

And it’s here that I, myself, struggled.  I, for one, learned no one sorts the way I do. Sees organizational patterns the way I do, or tackled the project in the way that I saw fit.  However, officially, from a practical standpoint, I’m a moderate.  I sometimes am prone towards saving…but it is almost always for sentimental reasons amidst which rocks, pelts, and old tables had none.  I’m all about throwing away clutter and getting rid of things that have outlived their purpose.  But I also see purpose and value where sometimes others don’t…

And yet, most of my coworkers weren’t so moderate.  Indeed, some of them were quite harsh.  It became a shouting match of “well I have never once used this!  Therefore it has no value!”  What about the fact some one else uses it every week?  And “I don’t know what this is for!  I will never use this!  Therefore no one ever will!” 

To me, the logic seemed flawed.  It frustrated me to no end.  Sometimes personally as the “junk” they had decided was long since useless, was something I used.  Something I saw with a purpose. 

I struggled.  Admittedly some with my coworkers to which this entire story has progressed, but mostly with what went beyond them. 

Far beyond whether someone thought the paint should stay or go or someone else thought that something that took up too much space should just be pitched. Far beyond such things was the innate question of value.

It bothered me that day in a way in which it has continued to bother me since… 

Who gets to decide value?

Who gets to assign worth?  And purpose?  And intention? 

And since when did that get to be me?

Because, see, it isn’t so much about capture the flag poles or the aquatic life ice covers.  These lack lasting bearing… 

And the problem isn’t held in such things or with even with “things”.  It isn’t even held in the frustrations I had with my coworkers those days (although this does eventually come into play in a quite opposite way).  The problem is held with me…

The problems which comes not from what gets thrown away…but who.

To whom do I give value to and whom do I “throw away”, ignore, dismiss?

I’d like to think I’m immune.  Somehow better than the average in seeking out the best in people regardless of whom they are and are not…

But I’m not.  I’m not immune and I’m DEFINITELY not better.  In fact, I may be among the worst. 

I can be terribly judgmental.  Terribly assuming.  I am often swayed by the worst in people and willingly mentally give and take away purpose as if it were my job.  And I’m as head strong as any of my coworkers (I am a Kasper after all!) which means…good luck changing my mind once it’s been set!

On one scale, my coworkers have probably all, at one point, been subject to my decisions of value.  Perhaps not innately as people but their thoughts, their opinions, their knowledge… [Confessing: definitely on sorting day...] I know I’ve made myself the judge in some of those circumstances.  And I know I've allowed those judgments to impact what I determined their value to be.

And embarrassedly in circumstances quite a bit bigger.  When value and purpose hits the “Real World”… which people or people groups have I deemed disposable?  Perhaps, and most likely, not deliberately with my words or a crescendo, but with my actions?  Whom have I decided has not the worth of others?  Whom have I deemed to be “junk” in this world which God looks past my labels and sees with a purpose?  His purpose?

I can see value and purpose and potential in arbitrary objects.  Yet my actions sometimes hold people high in the air proclaiming “I don’t know what this person is good for and so no one ever will! Toss ‘em!”  All the while God is looking at me saying “now hold on just a cotton pickin’ second!  Who are YOU to decide who to throw away?  Who makes you the one to overhaul the world and decide who should stay and who should go?”

Me, another throw away person God has saved from a trash pile for His purposes. 

There is a quote by, of all people, Audrey Hepburn that I love.  She wrote “People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.”  In these simple words, the grace of the Father is articulated in an especially poignant way.  They scream “Anika, you have been reclaimed and redeemed.  God is in the continual process of restoring you.  If your value can be revived, who are you to throw away the value of another?  Be part of the process of redemption…”

Redeeming from the clutter the people I and the rest of the world throw away…

“It makes me wonder, contemplate, and become intrigued by the ideas of “value” and “worth”.  What things have little worth or value in the wrong hands but are of infinite value in the hand of those who can hold, because they know, the true worth?  And I think the end of the this query almost always ends not with pennies or things or even ideas or causes…but with people…” 

 - Wheatback Pennies and Worth, October 2012

*I had quite a different end in mind when I first started writing. Same topic, different angle.  Different means of communicating.  Things which convict as I write have a way of eventually being written mostly just for me as it completes.  For this reason it rests somewhat unfinished and open-ended.  If this post was for you as it was for me (in which my head still spins with things unwritten), I imagine you’ll need to write the end for yourself anyway…

I Am The Unfaithful

I am the unfaithful.

These are the words of fierce truth though unspoken reality which have been plaguing at the backside and inside and outside of my mind. 

I am the unfaithful.

When I think about and consider the identifiers that seem, perhaps not the truest but, in fact, the most accurate and honest, only one such rings through.  When I reflect on my inadequacies and insufficiencies (I’m rather gifted in this sort of reflection), when I see myself in light who and what I wish I saw and what and who really stands before me, I see one not nearly so faithful as the one she wishes to so appear...

I am the unfaithful…

After relocating a previous new year’s post, I considered writing a blog to bring in the new year…only to realize I had only blogged nine times in 2013 and one of those was a reposting.  It, in fact, fed into the current stream.  I recognized it fresh and anew... 

I am the unfaithful.

I perused my journal…the free space of my most private thoughts…as I often due at the end of the year.  I read through.  I look for patterns, connections, changes, truths.  I conclude my year and I begin again.  Less than a dozen typed pages were there for me to read.  (Other years had months that were low if I only wrote 12 pages!).  There were no thoughts on my days or my weeks.  There was no exchanged interchange as God and I considered together where we were and what life was about. 

I am the unfaithful.

I repacked my year-long devotional as I gathered pieces from my holiday break.  The one that is still only half read.  And I packed next to it the prayer journal from two years ago.  The one with only the first 23 pages written it…detailing maybe a handful more scattered days. 

I am the unfaithful.

I emptied my bible of the remaining bulletins I had yet to throw away or pass on...from a half of a dozen churches still.  All visited.  All left me dry, longing, wanting, and un-refreshed and unfilled.  All were neglected without a second visit.  All uncommitted to.  All leaving me uncommitted to church as a whole.

I am the unfaithful.

The stacks of books I didn’t read.  The photo album still left undone. With the pictures that were never taken. The letters unwritten and the cards unsent.  The visits that never happened.  The correspondence lost.  The elliptical with only a quarter of the miles I had hoped to put on it.  The 5K I still can’t run. The prayers I forgot to pray and the passages I never read. 

From the petty to the real.  For the intricate to the mundane.  I feel as if I have faithfully completed…nothing.  And it makes me wonder…

Have I faithfully responded to anything at all?

Have I been where God needs me to be?  Have I listened to His still sure voice?  Have I acted out of wisdom and in love?  Have I journeyed with peace and joy and perseverance?  Have I continued with surrender, demonstrated trust?  Was I simply kind without it being an expectation? Was I firm in my convictions and gentle in their outsourcing? Was I patient in affliction?  Faithful in prayer? Where was I faithful?

Or was I faithful at all?

Have I stayed out of fear? Have I led out of pride?  Have I encouraged out of selfish ambition?  Have I given with expectation?  Have I endeavored without humility?  Have I pursued without honesty?  Have I spoken without belief?  Lived without hope?  Have I hidden behind hypocrisy and lies?

After all, I am the unfaithful…

I try hard.  But effort doesn’t always equal faithfulness.  And I think I try hard and want to say I try hard but do I try hard enough? …Or is that also a place where I prove once again that I’m the unfaithful?

Sometimes I look into the mirror and want to echo David in Psalm 12 in stating “Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race…”  For surely it is me.

I know Israel’s history.  I know they are the only ones perhaps intrinsically more unfaithful than I am.  And I know God doesn’t tolerate unfaithfulness.  For He IS faithful.  And He calls His people as His own and with His own.  He calls us to respond with faithfulness.  “Be sure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you.” (1 Samuel 12:24).  When I reflect on the God who Is...what other choice do I have but to respond?

Except I still manage to be the unfaithful…

Underoath has a song I love and have never quite been able to shake entitled “Some Will Seek Forgiveness, Others Escape”.  And in it I’m ever humbled by these words: “Hey unfaithful I will teach you to be stronger, to be stronger.  Hey unloving, I will love you, I will love you, I will love you…”

I am grateful that even though I am unfaithful, God continues to be faithful (2 Timothy 2:13).  And that His grace is greater than my inadequacies.

I am the unfaithful.  But Lord, find me faithful…

“Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”  Psalm 86:11