The Slow Way: Naming God, And Abiding in Mystery
What and how we name God is the story we’re telling ourselves and the world.
Naming God, And Abiding in Mystery
O God beyond all names,
I want to encounter the unfathomable poem that you are. O Holy One, you have pitched a tent in my heart. You are my shelter, my tree of life. You are my cave, my haven, my abode. You are the sanctuary where I dwell. I am the sanctuary where you dwell.
-Macrina Wiederkehr, The Flowing Grace of Now
In the last months of my pregnancy with my first son, I walked a trail near my home most mornings, praying for the boy I knew was coming, agonizing over his name. How do you know do you know do you know it’s the right name? And who says who has the right to name a human! Even as he came from my own body, and everything in me said he was mine, I felt insufficient for such a task.
And still, that baby’s face! — my nose, his dad’s blue eyes. We called him by his name. The name we had chosen. What a risk that is; every good story begins with a name.
God’s name doesn’t show up until part way into the Hebrew scriptures, and even then, its vague. God names God’s own self: “I am who I am,” Yahweh, a name about being in this moment, a name about presence, a name that defies to be contained. It became regarded by the Jewish people as too sacred to be spoken.
“I am who I am” is the name for God I find myself coming back to the most: A lesson in naming and refusing to name: I am beyond you. I am beyond the names you give for me.
But that is not to say we haven’t tried to name the One Who is Beyond. The Hebrew scriptures are full of other attempts: Jehovah Jirah, my provider! I sang in middle school to some 90’s horns and a cheesy church beat. El Shaddai, Amy Grant sang for me, “God Almighty.” The names tell us about the character of the Divine: Jehovah Rapha, “The God that heals.” The Jewish tradition gives us more names. And then Jesus offers one that stuck: Abba, Father.
Science has some things to say about why we name things and each other in the first place. Giving something a name actually allows it to encode it in our human brains. Naming something changes how we interact with that object. “Naming promotes a sense of control and psychological ownership, which is a form of bonding.” And is that what we need? When we call the Divine by a name maybe what we’re longing for most is connection.
To name, in its oldest sense, is to say what a thing is. And so we know who we are by what we are called. Is God a name we’ve tossed around too easily? A word we’ve abused, until the meaning we gave it has lost its goodness? And how do we find the holy name again? How do we say what we experience in Divine Love?
In a talk she gave back in 2014, Barbara Brown Taylor began by greeting the audience in “the name of the one God who comes in more than one way.”
If God comes in more than one way, maybe we can release our human need to give that Presence a name we comprehend. Maybe words will never pin down the Holy One? The Divine remains outside of the containers we use. To walk beside I Am we must learn to embrace mystery.
Macrina Wiederkehr prays, “I want to encounter the unfathomable poem that you are. O Holy One, you have pitched a tent in my heart. You are my shelter, my tree of life. You are my cave, my haven, my abode. You are the sanctuary where I dwell. I am the sanctuary where you dwell.”
What do we name the One Who Is, the One who refuses to be pinned into one meaning? Holy One of Light. Holy One in the Dark. God Who is Here. God Who is Far. The Source of Goodness. The Source of Love, The One Who Rescues, The One Who Restores, The Source of Rest. Creative One.
Some names are painfully overused. Some are fresh and beautiful. Some can sometimes, miraculously feel like an old artifact scrubbed and shined into something utterly new. But I propose that there is a blessing to be found in the naming. That allowing us to name God is a grace we have been given. We are invited to name, just as we are invited to know the unfathomable God.
What and how we name God is the story we’re telling ourselves and the world. And as mysterious as it often feels, I Am Who I Am is here “I-Aming “ right beside us.
Of course, referring to God as Mystery is as difficult as it’s always been. And I’ll probably keep writing “God” around here, not because it’s the name that rings most true, but because it’s the tidiest container I’ve found, for better or worse.
Maybe the naming of God has less to do about what we call God when we’re talking about meaning, and more about the names we use when we come into the presence of the Divine One. Naming is connection. The blessing for us is in the naming, friends. Because each time we dip our toes in unknowable water, we are closer to the Really Real. God of Names, and Mystery. God of Invitation, God of Love That Compels Us to Try.
May we name, not to get it right, but in order to abide in the mystery.
A Slow Practice
Today let’s practice naming God as we breathe. I’ll give you some prayers, but feel free to stay with whatever name of God is speaking to you most today.
Let’s take a deep breath together. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in: I Am Who I Am, I welcome you here.
Breathe out: Come close to me.
Breathe in: Holy One of Light, I welcome you here.
Breathe out: Come close to me.
Breathe in: Holy One in the Dark, I welcome you here.
Breathe out: Come close to me.
Breathe in: God Who is Here, I welcome you.
Breathe out: Come close to me.
Breathe in: God Who Feels Far, I welcome you.
Breathe out: Come close to me.
Breathe in: The Source of Goodness, I welcome you.
Breathe out: Come close to me.
Breathe in: The Source of Love, I welcome you.
Breathe out: Come close to me.
Breathe in: The One Who Rescues, I welcome you.
Breathe out: Come close to me.
Breathe in: The Source of Rest, I welcome you.
Breathe out: Come close to me.
Give yourself some time to focus on one of these names for God. What is it in your spirit and body that draws you to that particular name?
A List of Things
Oh, I love it when Sarah Bessey tells us stories. This one about her relationship with her mom as teen, with her son right now, and the gift of Rich Mullins’ music to a whole slew of us in the evangelical nineties who longed for permission to experience our faith with nuance and beauty. The song she writes about, “Elijah,” brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it still. Her essay is “Let them worry, I know your soul is fine”
“How to Raise Untamed Kids,” the interview with Dr. Becky Kennedy, a parenting expert on Glennon Doyle’s podcast this week was so good that three days after listening and thinking on what she had to say, I used my credit on Audible (my one beautiful once-a-month credit!) to buy her book Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be. I will report back on how it goes.
I’ve been listening to various forms of “Low-fi Chill” as I’ve been working on my book project. I like having focus-music in my ears while I work. And August introduced me last year to the concept of low-fi music, which I like. But I’m getting tired of it. This past week on Pop Culture Happy Hour one of the hosts shared “Music for Animals” by Nils Fraham as one of his favorite things this week. This is ambient music that (I guess?) is literally designed to ease animals into their sleep. My dog and cat, who are currently asleep at my feet and windowsill, respectively, do not need any ambient music to help them snooze. I tried it anyway. Jury’s still out. I was more attached to another rec, “Ambient Music for Watering Plants” by Past Palms, which is more my style. (Not sure it makes me want to water my plants, though.)
I owe my friend Jerusalem Jackson Greer for the great joy of her sharing this throwback yesterday on Instagram. Sweata Weatha is here in the Northeast and I’m delighted.
This article in The New Yorker is a review of T.M. Luhrmann’s new book How God Becomes Real. Luhrmann is a Stanford anthropologist who has been studying American evangelical worship for the past twenty years. This seems to be an anthropological study of how the evangelical church teaches believers to make God come to life through practice. She’s not interested in proving whether God is real or not. She’s interested in how people in this particular brand of Christianity prove it to themselves. Not sure if I want to read the book, honestly, but I am fascinated in the ways Luhrmann says evangelical believers practice idolatry, making God “usable.”
Thanks for talking about the names for God. I get so tired of using the same ‘father God’ or ‘dear Jesus’ starts to my prayers. I really want to stop and use what is on my heart when I pray. Once again, your story is helping me along my journey. Thank you sister.
Then you amaze me with the story by Sarah Bessey and my heart is touched again.
Now I’m listening to ‘Elijah’ and getting all the 90’s feelings. You are a gift.
Keep on sharing with us out here 🙌🏼
Love ya, Sandy