A Secret Name on a Small White Stone
October 14, 2008
You’re my Honeybunch, Sugarplum
Pumpy-umpy-umpkin, You’re my Sweetie Pie
You’re my Cuppycake, Gumdrop
Snookgums-Boogums, You’re the Apple of my Eye
And I love you so and I want you to know
That I’ll always be right here
And I love to sing sweet songs to you
Because you are so dear.
I know. It’s so sickeningly sweet and over-the-top you want to gag. Go ahead. Gag a little and once you’ve treated yourself to a Listerine rinse sit yourself back down and prepare yourself for truly disturbing news.
In the eight plus years D and I have been together I’ve called her by every pet name imaginable, and yes, that includes Sweetiepie, Honeybunch and Pumpkin. I’m holding onto Snoogum-Boogums and Cuppycake for the next time I forget to clean out the cat box or wash the dark clothes in hot water. While this admission no doubt wrecks total havoc on my incredibly cool dyke-ish veneer I’m trusting you to not tell anyone. ¿Hermana a la hermana, por favor?
For a long time my pet name for D was Boo. I’m not sure where it came from but I loved calling her Boo and she loved hearing it so it worked for us. It worked until the day I accidentally called our slightly crazy cat Tweety by D’s pet name. With a kitty treat in my hand, I held it in front of the cat and said the unthinkable.
“Here Boo.”
“What did you just call the cat?” she asked as I began searching desperately around the room for someone else to blame. Apparently having your wife call you by the same pet name as she calls “the pet” tends to diminish the sweetness of it all. Who knew? Anyway, that’s why when sometime later I came up with a new pet name D liked she issued forth instructions. “Don’t call anyone else by that name, okay? I want it to be mine.” And so I never have. I’m slow, not stupid.
We’re like most couples. We share an intimate language between us. Some of the terms of endearment we use with each other are common to other couples. Honey. Sweetheart. Baby. Others are just between us. None. Of. Your. Business. Not because they’re shamelessly provocative but simply because those names belong just to us. A secret little language between two people in love. Read the Song of Songs. We aren’t even privy to their given names because all they ever did was call each other the little names they made up for the other. Whether talking to their lover or talking to others about them the pet names were non-stop. My beloved, my fair one, my lover, my dove, my king.”
Pet names. Given names. Every name we have, from the one chosen for us by our parents to the ones we collect over our lives from friends, loved ones and partners, play a part in shaping our self-identity. It’s true that we grown and live into the names by which we’re called.
Wait! I almost forgot. That was close!
Before you read any further take a minute and go outside and find two stones. Humor me will you? The size and shape don’t matter. Just try and find one stone that’s as close to white as possible and another stone that’s a darker shade. When you bring them back inside place the white stone near you on the table and hold the other in your hand as you continue reading. Okay.
The stone you’re holding represents other names that might have stuck with you over your life and gone into shaping your self-identity whether you wanted them to or not. We once chanted on the playground,“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” but even while chanting it with a firm upper lip I knew it wasn’t true. Name-calling hurt. They were like stones that smashed our spirits and vied for power in making us who we believed we really were. Every stone that the crowd readied in their hands to hurl at the adulterous woman was named. Tramp. Whore. Prostitute. Sinner. Had Jesus not intervened those stones could have crushed the life out of her. Such is the power of naming stones.
Have you ever been called a name that determined your identity? Did you hear Ugly when you were told “You’d be so pretty if you only lost some weight?” Have you always thought you were Stupid because you never seemed able to bring home grades that met you or your parents expectations? Did a lover betray you and leave you feeling Unlovable? Are you a Loser because you didn’t get the job you wanted or an Outsider because you weren’t included in the popular crowd? Have you always thought of yourself as Dirty because you were abused sexually as a child? And how about the names we hear directed at us as GLBTQ people? Pervert. Abomination. Sinner. How do you answer the question “Who am I?” How do you answer that question really, in the depths of your heart? Do your naming stones, and some of us have a pile of them, affect your answer? Whatever names you’ve been carrying within yourself all these years, write them on the stone you hold in your hand, and when you’re done, place that stone down and replace it with the white stone.
Scripture reveals our true identity. We are the people of God. We are God’s workmanship. We are sons and daughters of the most high God. We are the sheep and God is the shepherd. We are a holy people, a royal priesthood. We are the beloved. We are the beloved. We are the beloved but often our true identity is hidden under a pile of naming stones.
But there is another stone that’s born out of the intimacy of our relationship with God that reveals a secret name your beloved has given to you alone; a name better than Honey or Baby or even Cuppycake. In Revelation 2:17 it reads that to all those who have overcome, God will “give a white stone and on the stone a new name written, which no one will know except the one who receives it.” Is it so hard to imagine, such a far stretch to consider that God, your heavenly parent and your beloved has a special name for you; a name so sweet, intimate, and tender that it is only for you and God to know?
The theologian George MacDonald wrote more than a hundred years ago of the stone mentioned in the Book of Revelations; the one represented by the stone you now hold in your hand. Taking liberty with MacDonald’s gender language he wrote,
“It is the woman’s own symbol – her soul’s picture, in a word – the sign which belongs to her and to no one else. Who can give a woman this, her own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the woman is…It is only when the woman has become her name that God gives her the stone with the name upon it, for then first can she understand what her name signifies…Such a name cannot be given until the woman is the name…that being whom He had in His thought when He began to make the child, and whom He kept in His thought through the long process of creations that went to realize the idea. To tell the name is to seal the success – to say “In thee also am I well pleased.”
God has a name for you, written on stone and even today you are becoming the name that God has held for you from the beginning of time. The naming stones are wrong. They aren’t your identity. Your most true identity can’t be given to you by parents, bosses, enemies, or even friends and lovers. Your identity is shaped and formed and flows from the very heart of God who loves you. Do you see that naming stone laying on the table near you. Give it up. Toss it away. Throw it in a river. Fling it over a mountain cliff. Whatever you do, get rid of it because it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It never did. Replace that naming stone that never really named you with God’s white stone. And why is the stone white? In ancient times a person was declared innocent by a jury if they presented the defendant with small white stones. While others find you guilty God declares you innocent and not only innocent but cherished by the bestowing of a unique and private name. Live in that name! Wake up each morning, take that white stone in your hand and ask that God would help you to grow into your name through the day. Though you don’t yet know what that still hidden secret name is by which you’re called, you can be assured that when you hear it you’ll smile because it will be a perfect fit.
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Afterword: Some of the content for this post came from a keynote presentation I gave a few years ago at an Evangelical’s Concerned Women’s Retreat. The theme I selected was “The Sacred Romance: Exploring Our Relationship with God,” and one of the many books I referred to was The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God. I’ve misplaced the book since then and so I can’t check to be certain which of the material above is original content or was gleaned from their writing. I mention this to be certain that proper credit is given.
One other thing I want to mention. I used the passage from Revelations in a devotional manner, to suggest that given the intimate relationship we share with God and of God’s great love for us, it doesn’t seem to be out of the scope of possibility that God has a name for each of his children that will be shared between only God and every individual. What I’m not doing is inferring that the text serves as evidence that my thoughts around God giving us a secret name has the backing of biblical authority. To use it in that manner would be to engage in proof-texting; a questionable practice at best, dishonoring of the scriptural text and the intention of the author at its worst.
Posted in Christian Lesbian Identity, Grace Meditations, Love and Grace
Sweet Hope Cookies
October 14th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
It was dark out when I read this post so I didn’t go looking for rocks, but I drew them. One was tan (sorry but my gray crayon was MIA) and the other I left white. I did what you said but instead of throwing the gray “rock” away I burned it. That was such a freeing thing for me to do. Thank you so much for that idea and this post.
But once again you have answered a question and left me with a few more. Will I know my “special” name while alive or only when I meet God? How can I grow into being my name if I don’t know what it is? And finally, How can one completely escape the world for their identity? By that I mean, so much of what we are is from our life experiences. I am the sum of the potential I had at birth and life experiences. How can I seperate the two? And is my life experiences what I needed to become what I am today?
Okay sorry for the ramblings. I did really like how you started this post. You called the cat her special name??? Gasps are heard around the lesbian world. That is why I call my Darling JB something that I can’t picture using with anyone or anything else.
October 15th, 2008 at 7:54 am
About the cat … it happened to me too, except we have dogs … Oops!
October 15th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Kelly,
I’ve seen over the years how powerful ritual can be for people and burning what we want to leave behind is incredibly symbolic since fire is all-consuming and serves as a cleansing, purifying agent. It was meaningful to think of you taking that action.
Your questions. Whew. You and your questions.
As to the ones around what our special name might be and when we’ll know it, remember that I said my use of that passage was only devotional. It wasn’t an exegetical treatment of the passage nor was I addressing something with a theological foundation. I base this notion that God calls each of us by a special name less on the scripture itself and more by what we experience in the most intimate of human relationships. If it’s true we share an intimate relationship with God through Christ then some of the very same aspects we experience in human relationships now would seem to be only reasonably a part of our relationship with the Divine. It pleases me to think of my relationship with God that way. It causes me to love him more, to feel more near to him, to be more deeply assured of his love for me and so I have no problem playing with the idea. As it is, there’s every chance that I’ll stand before God one day and when I ask to see the rock with my name on it, God will answer, “Huh? What are you talking about? What rock? What name?” And then God and I will enjoy a laugh together over my mushy sentimental notions. It’s still fun to think about.
So do I think we’ll know our special name in this life or when we meet God? I like wondering about that. I would imagine it could be different for each of us, but I don’t think knowing the name is required for growing into the name. Each morning when we wake we pray “God, lead me in the path you have for me today. Let my life reflect who I am in you and who you have called me to be.” As we live with our hearts set toward God and seeking God’s will, how can we help but to grow into the name that God has given us? Imagine living your life like that each day and at the end of your life, God places the stone in your hand and you turn it over and there you find your name carved on it’s surface. You see the name on the stone and as you reflect on the life you’ve just lived you understand how perfect that name was for you all along and how God led you faithfully toward it all the days of your life. Just a thought.
As to your other questions Kelly, we’re the sum total of our life experiences along with who we know we are in God. I don’t think it’s one or the other but both woven together. Anita is who Anita is because of my upbringing, the relationships I’ve had throughout my life, the places I’ve been and the experiences, both joyful and painful, I’ve encountered. Anita is also who she is because she is a child of God and finds her identity in her Creator. Now, it only goes to reason that if I were able to live each day solely out of my identity in God then there’s no question that would be a much better me. As it is, while I strife and hope and pray to be more and more of who I am in Christ, who I am today is also shaped by the strengths and weaknesses that have developed out of my life experience, and those weaknesses are areas that I’ll continue to work on the rest of my life…as do we all.
In my post, I wasn’t saying to abandon the identity that’s being shaped by life, but to let go of the junk that some of those experiences have left us with that hold us down in some way, that cause us to walk in shame or prevents us from moving forward in freedom and wholeness. Those are the things that never belonged to us and how do we know what they are? Because they are the very things that run counter to our identity in God. Does that make sense?
And yes. The cat. Sigh.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Okay, maybe I need to explain where some of my questions came from. I had a friend tell me last week that I would never know my special name from God because I had closed my self off to him. That when I died, God would tell the name that I should have been but had no hope of achieveing. So your post came at a oppurtune time. My questions were not so much concrete as philosphical. Sorry for the rambling.
But I do still have a hard time seperating my experiences from who I should be. She has told me that the things that are holding me back are signs from God that my “lifestyle” is unpleasing to God. And things won’t move forward till I leave my “choice” behind. I of course disagree with her, but somedays it hits home ya know?
Thanks for listening and answering the questions of a mad woman.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:03 am
I was at a conference a year or so ago and they did something similiar to this, I remember at the time it was very powerful. Instead of the rocks, we had to go up to someone at the front and tell them what our “old” names were, they in turned prayed for us and then told us what they felt they heard the Lord saying was our “new” name.
I shed a lot of old names there that day.. many that I had continued to speak over myself and not just ones from other people. I became aware of how powerful the judgement of others can be, but also the judgement of ourselves.
I walked away that day with a new name. And then for a couple weeks afterwards at church, people were coming up to me and giving me more new names.
Thanks for causing the memory of this day to come to mind.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:13 am
I am a little thomas in personality, as powerful as that white stone is and as wonderful a feeling it provides me that God has a name, I still wonder about what name God chose for me. The mystery sometimes eats at me.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Kelly –> Wow. That’ some close friend to say those kind of things to another person. Harsh stuff. I know you know how shaky and wrong all her comments are so there’s no point in me addressing any of it even though it leaves me biting my tongue to hold myself back from a full frontal assault. Suffice it to say, God has a name for you and when you see it, it will be as though you’ve known it all along. A perfect fit, because after all, who knows you better than God? Certainly not your close friend. Oh, I’m sorry. Did I say that in my out loud voice?
Joni–> I bet that was a powerful experience. I would imagine too that many people have a name-stone they’ve carried around for much of their lives that they don’t even have the courage to speak out loud because it’s so deep inside them that to share it would feel like it was risking too much. I love the idea of giving new names.
Dawn–>Ah, but our faith is one big mystery and if we ever forget that then we’re living like we’ve got it all figured out and if we have it all figured out then it ceases being faith at all. Mystery is good….even when it gnaws at you a little, don’t you think?
October 16th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
This new name post has kept me thinking over the last few days. Their are two names that I have carried around for myself for many years. The first I picked up way back as a young teen…Unclean. Well God in His mercy set me free last summer with that very word in Acts 10, “call no one unholy or unclean”.
The other name I chose in 1990 after my father had passed away and I was trying to figure out who I was and why I was different. At the time my friends said they would never call me that. It took away my wind, I knew if they wouldn’t accept the name I’d chosen they would never accept me. Now I am happy to be called Eliz and my real friends accept me for who I really am. As soon as I acknowledged I was gay the name Eliz came right back to me, and felt so natural, like it was my name all along.
Whatever name God calls me it will be special because as my Creator, God has always given me the best. I will wait in patient longing for the day God says child come home and calling me His child is enough for me.
October 17th, 2008 at 12:58 am
I really enjoyed this post…names & pet names have always been somewhat of a big issue to me but now I know the most important thing is to find out God’s name for me. =)
Btw, that quote is from Revelation 2:17 instead of 12:7 . =P