Naming Grace

My list of naming God-gifts lies open on the counter …

117. Washing the warm eggs

118. Crackle in fireplace

119. Still-warm cookies

Naming is Edenic.

I name gifts and go back to the Garden and God in the beginning who first speaks a name and lets that which is come into existence. This naming is how the first emptiness of space fills: the naming of light and land and sky. The first man’s first task is to name. Adam completes creation with his Maker through the act of naming creatures, releasing the land from chaos, from the teeming, indefinable mass. I am seeing it too, in the journal, in the face of the Farmer: naming offers the gift of recognition. When I name moments — string out laundry and name-pray, thank You, Lord, for bedsheets in billowing winds, for fluff of sparrow landing on line, sun winter warm, and one last leaf still hanging in the orchard — I am Adam and I discover my meaning and God’s, and to name is to learn the language of Paradise. This naming work never ends for all the children of Adam. Naming to find an identity, our identity, God’s.

It’s late, and in the lamplight when the bones finally rest, I read and turn a page and run unexpected into these words:

I read the words again. The heart palpitates hard. I don’t hear the clock or the slosh hum of the dishwasher. All I can see, think, is that my whim writing of one thousand gratitudes, the naming of the moments — this is truly a holy work.

This naming really does call now a gift, a gift of God. I read again: “To name a thing is to manifest the meaning and value God gave it.” I look at a day, a thing, an event in front of me, and it may look manna-strange: “What is it?” But when I name it, the naming of it manifests its meaning: to know it comes from God. This is gift! Naming is to know a thing’s function in the cosmos — to name is to solve mystery.

In naming that which is right before me, that which I’d otherwise miss, the invisible becomes visible.

The space that spans my inner emptiness fills in the naming.

I name. And I know the face I face.

God’s! God is in the details; God is in the moment. God is in all that blurs by in a life — even hurts in a life.

GOD!

How can I not name? Naming these moments may change the ugly names I call myself.

I put a pen to a journal, to name solve, and I shake it when it runs dry, trace circles, and I coax out ink.

Lord, help me in the true work You’ve assigned to me today: to name the graces You give me this day. Cause me to name the ways You love — so I can own my own name: Beloved.