Renaming God: First We Must Listen
responding to a poem and image from Dea Jenkins
responding to a poem and image from Dea Jenkins
Image by Dea Jenkins
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RENAMING THINGS
by Dea Jenkins The thing will tell you what it is If you listen for its name Naming is not an act of subjugation But of foretelling The secret whispered to you When you caught the scent Of essence offered The glory of a thing Has yet to be revealed But light will hit with rays golden Shredding the seed of unknowing innocence Life bursting forth like a fearsome stream |
Listening for Names
Responding to the Poem and Image
Open and relational theologians have many different affiliations: Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, and spiritual but not religious. We are known to many for our understanding of God.
When we use the word "God" we are naming a reality that brings light to the world like a fearsome yet gentle stream. For us God is an indwelling lure within each and every human heart to life with respect and care for life itself, and also a loving receptacle for the world's joys and sufferings. We believe that the future is open or not-yet-decided, not only for us but also for God.
Dea Jenkins' poem Renaming Things, and the image associated with it, encourages us to be careful with our naming of God, because it can indeed be an act of subjugation: of turning God into an object of the intellect. Indeed, her poem is a reminder for us to be careful with the very word "God." The Jewish tradition sometimes refuses to put the "o" in the written word for just this reason. Sometimes our sisters and brothers in Judaism write G-d not God, to remind themselves and the world that there's alway something unnameable about the reality.
Mindful of this, Jenkins' poem and image invites us into a new habit of thought and heart. Instead of quickly naming the fearsome yet gentle stream, we listen for its essence as coming forth to us in the intimacies, struggles, complexities, poignancies of everyday life - and then we use words which resonate with that essence. Those words may not be "God." They may instead derive from what Spirituality and Practice calls the spiritual alphabet of humanity. They may be Peace or Justice or Beauty or Questing or Play. Or Love. And they may be inescapably linked with faces and lives of other people, or hills and rivers, or memories and hopes We may meet Play in the laughter of a small child. We may meet Beauty in the harmonies of song. We may meet Justice in the struggle for freedom. We meet the holy in the concrete realities of our lives, and let their names flow forth from these....things. We rename them, yes, but they rename us, too. We are different after the listening. We ourselves have been transformed into new speech.
-- Jay McDaniel (Jan. 24, 2020)
When we use the word "God" we are naming a reality that brings light to the world like a fearsome yet gentle stream. For us God is an indwelling lure within each and every human heart to life with respect and care for life itself, and also a loving receptacle for the world's joys and sufferings. We believe that the future is open or not-yet-decided, not only for us but also for God.
Dea Jenkins' poem Renaming Things, and the image associated with it, encourages us to be careful with our naming of God, because it can indeed be an act of subjugation: of turning God into an object of the intellect. Indeed, her poem is a reminder for us to be careful with the very word "God." The Jewish tradition sometimes refuses to put the "o" in the written word for just this reason. Sometimes our sisters and brothers in Judaism write G-d not God, to remind themselves and the world that there's alway something unnameable about the reality.
Mindful of this, Jenkins' poem and image invites us into a new habit of thought and heart. Instead of quickly naming the fearsome yet gentle stream, we listen for its essence as coming forth to us in the intimacies, struggles, complexities, poignancies of everyday life - and then we use words which resonate with that essence. Those words may not be "God." They may instead derive from what Spirituality and Practice calls the spiritual alphabet of humanity. They may be Peace or Justice or Beauty or Questing or Play. Or Love. And they may be inescapably linked with faces and lives of other people, or hills and rivers, or memories and hopes We may meet Play in the laughter of a small child. We may meet Beauty in the harmonies of song. We may meet Justice in the struggle for freedom. We meet the holy in the concrete realities of our lives, and let their names flow forth from these....things. We rename them, yes, but they rename us, too. We are different after the listening. We ourselves have been transformed into new speech.
-- Jay McDaniel (Jan. 24, 2020)
