“But we, the creatures are named, and our names are part of our wholeness… And I remember the times when I have been given a name—and to be given a name is an act of intimacy as powerful as any act of love. To name is to love. To be Named is to be loved.” -Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water
Perhaps some of you have at some point made the mistake of addressing me as Mary, only to swiftly (yet tactfully) be corrected by me and told that my name is Mary Margaret, thank you very much, and I prefer to be called that. Call me Mary Margaret, or one of my nicknames, but not just Mary or just Margaret. Thanks.
That was one of the first things that had to go once I got here. My fervent insistence that I be called by both names, the instinctual cringe when someone “slipped up” and called me Mary, my explanation that I did not “feel” like a Mary—these well rehearsed lines did not have a place here. For the first time in my life, I introduce myself as Mary to new people, and allow people I consider to be my friends to call me Mary. The people in the international community still call me Mary Margaret, but to the teachers at school, I am Mary, and to my students, I am Miss Mary.
I’ve always liked my name, and as many people do, I connect my name to my identity. I connect it to the two women, my great grandmothers, who each gave me half of my name, contributing to my wholeness, their history becoming part of my history. I connect it to my mother, Mary Joe, who wanted one of her daughters to have a double name like she does. I connect my name to my southern heritage, and to a rather silly feeling of originality at having a rare name. We know the shape of our names written on paper, we can hear our names spoken quietly across a noisy and crowded room.
Part of learning and growing here seems to have a great deal to do with letting go, even of those things that we cling to as tightly as possible- our ideas about ourselves, our ideas about God, our ideas about the way the world should work and about the way it actually does work. Somehow this year is slipping away, and in less than three months time I will return to the States to begin some new, unknown thing. The question I’ve been asking myself recently is, what change is this year working within me? This place has given me a new name— so in what ways is it making me into a new thing? When I left my old comfortable, familiar environment, what elements of my identity did I let go of, and what new ones arose to fill the empty places. Do I feel I am more patient with myself and others? Yes. And yet, at the same time, do I feel angrier? Yes, absolutely. Witnessing such forthright injustice, discrimination, and hatred has brought a new kind of frustration and weariness to my world-view. Do I believe that I have gained knowledge? In some ways yes, and in others ways, I feel that I know even less what to say. Perhaps most significantly, do I feel that the act of loving and being loved by, and even trying to love people here is changing me? Yes.
Change happens within us in a way that is usually beyond clear articulation, and many things will probably only become apparent to me once I have left Jerusalem and returned home. Letting go, changing names, changing identities. Certainly this year will not leave me unrecognizable to those I left one year ago, but I know with certainty that the Mary Margaret who will return in July is not the one who set out in August. The truth is that we are all constantly going through a process of transformation, whether we are at home, or far from it. My prayer is that God is using my experiences to transform me more and more into who he wants me to be. Beyond Mary, Miss Mary, Mary Margaret, He has named us all in love—He has called us Child. And I think, or perhaps hope, that in many ways this working out of who am I?, how have I changed?, is a searching for this ultimate identity, our most important name.
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. Isaiah 43: 1
