The Naming of Eve

If someone were to ask me what my occupation is, I’d reply, “Preoccupation!” I spend most of my waking moments just thinking. Sometimes I wish I had a switch somewhere on my skull that I could flip whenever I needed my brain to stop its flow of thoughts through the neuron connections. Of course, it would have to be hidden underneath my thick black hair so that no one could come along and flip it off at an inconvenient time. My kids would have used it often in order to get my attention.

Some thinking times are more intense than others. Unfortunately I tend to have those wide-awake, brain-racing moments in the early morning hours when I really want to sleep later than the time the bedside clock is showing with its glowing digits. It’s been happening a lot lately. And it can get frustrating.

Sometimes I squeeze my eyes tightly hoping the thoughts will pop like a balloon and deflate to the ground. Sometimes I get up, scurry across the cold floors to my computer and either record or distract my brain activity. A few times I have sat in my chair by the bed and prayed because my thoughts were so disturbing. But most of the time I go with the flow and see where they take me.

One recent morning I awoke with the switch turned on and I decided to go with the flow. For no discernable reason, my brain traveled to China where I thought about my “naming” experience from last September.

In an earlier post, I tell the story of how my translator Fangfang named me. It is customary for the foreigner to be given a Chinese name, one that is carefully chosen and lovingly bestowed. Fangfang took over a week to find my name. She chose it after observing me and listening to my messages in order to capture my heart.

I thought about why this custom exists in China, at least among the Chinese Christians I met in Beijing. What did it do for me?

When Fangfang named me, I felt welcomed into her world. And because the name fit me perfectly, I felt known. Fangfang was my equal (or one could argue she was subordinate since my costs included hiring her as a translator) and when she named me, I felt a special bond to her, a heart connection that enhanced the roles we were engaging in as speaker and translator. We needed each other. We appreciated each other. We were a team.

And then it occurred to me that perhaps Eve felt the same way when she was created, presented to Adam and then named by him.

Adam and Eve were God’s first leadership team.

Genesis 1 records the creation of the universe culminating in the creation of man and woman. In Genesis 1:26-28 the three verses form an inclusio or what I call a “hamburger.” Verses 26 and 28 form the top and bottom “bun” which repeat one command from God: BOTH male and female are to rule over the natural world. BOTH are to steward God’s creation. Verse 27 is the “meat” that contains the theology to drive the commission: BOTH male and female image God together. It is in the relationship between male and female that the triune God is imaged most accurately .

Then Genesis 2 does a funny thing. It starts all over. This time we are told that the man was actually created first. However God’s intention for the man is made clear. He is not to be alone and he needs help. But the man also needs to go through an exercise of self-discovery.

I imagine the first man as a puzzle piece that needed to be relationally connected to another puzzle piece in order to complete the whole picture. And unless he went through the exercise and felt his aloneness deeply, perhaps God knew the man would disconnect from his partner and think he was sufficient to image God and rule well. Unfortunately, this happens in Genesis 3.

But until then, the exercise works. Through the act of observing the animals in detail and naming them all, the man realizes he is alone. Divinely anesthesized, he goes through surgery and wakes up to a new reality. His world is now to be shared with another human being, created by God to be his ezer, his equal, his strong helper and co-warrior.

When the man meets his partner he welcomes her into his world by naming her. She is woman and she is known by him—she is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. They are connected. They are a team.

For Adam, naming wasn’t about power or authority. It was an act of bonding, of solidarity, and of mutual dependence.

I think the Chinese understand the power of naming.

And I went back to sleep.

Old Rooms, New Paint

It’s almost 2012. 

Time to make new resolutions—except I gave up on doing those a long time ago.

This past week, as I was painting the interior of a huge house, I reflected on this traditional but futile exercise. What is it about the New Year that brings such hope of transformation in some habit or lifestyle? It’s as if a hidden room reveals itself on January 1 filled with treasures of old dreams and new motivations. Like Harry Potter’s Room of Requirement, all I have to do is stand in front of it, think hard about what I need to do for the coming year and poof! I’m standing inside the room where all the needed resources and motivations to change are available to me.

Unfortunately, like the students of Harry’s special school of wizardry, I still have to work hard to learn new habits and make the desired changes. After a while, it gets too hard to even think about what I need in order to get in. The room disappears for another January 1.

Perhaps what’s needed is not the special Room of Requirement (the title may reveal the possible problem), but just a fresh perspective of the old rooms.

There’s something euphoric about putting fresh paint on the walls of a well-worn room. All of a sudden everything seems new. There’s a different feel to the room. Painting a room ends up including a process of cleaning, cobweb removal and repairing. Hidden flaws are exposed. Concealed creatures, usually dead, are uncovered. Dusty surfaces are revealed. Once the room is cleaned and painted, it is transformed into something new.

But it’s not really new. The room is still the same old room. It just feels new and vibrant with life.

I wonder if this is what’s really behind our need for January 1. I wonder if my resolutions disappear by February because I view the need for transformation as being a change from bad to good instead of old to new. I can’t sustain being good when I never feel good enough. But I can live into the new since the old always has an opportunity to become new, whether through refreshment or replacement.

As I painted and reflected, I couldn’t help but imagine what hope for the new year would look like if I concentrated on refreshing old rooms instead of disappearing into the Room of Requirement. Instead of forcing a new lifestyle or habit change through resolutions, I imagined cleaning and refreshing old rooms through new thought patterns and values. I imagined my fears as creatures needing to be removed, lies as flaws to be exposed and repaired, and the deep truths of my faith as furniture to be dusted off and revealed in all its beauty and strength.

What I want for the New Year is to feel new and more alive than the year before. Through the years of following Christ, I have found that newness and aliveness comes through deep transformation of old rooms in my life. What’s freeing to me is that this transformation still preserves the real me. I don’t have to make a resolution that’s unrealistic (for example, “I’m going to train for a marathon like my other 50+ year old friends”). Instead I can identify thought patterns that keep me from putting on my sweats and going out the door for a two-mile walk around the block.

What I want for 2012 is to be available for continued remodeling of the rooms of my soul, to be a more refreshed and life-filled “house” to share with others:

By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established;

Through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.

                                                                                    (Proverbs 24:3-4)

I want to wake up on January 1, 2012 with anticipation of newness.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, she is a new creature;

The old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

                                                             (2 Corinthians 5:17)

I want the same for you – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Neverland

Neverland. The place where you never grow old. 

Jon and I watched the two-day mini-series, Neverland, in one sitting (thanks to the DVR). This Syfy movie is the prequel to J.M. Barrie’s, Peter Pan. It’s the story of how Peter becomes Peter Pan and how Captain Hook loses his hand and his tick tocking watch. But mostly it’s the story of how Peter and Hook end up being enemies. The storywriters provide a compelling, creative and surprising answer to a question no one has really asked about this classic. The answer is also tragic. And it’s rooted in the age-old story of betrayal, heartbreak and loss of trust.

In the story, Peter is an orphan who looks up to and loves James “Jimmy” Hook, who seemingly cares for him like a father. Jimmy is the mentor to Peter and a small band of boys (later the “lost boys”) and teaches them to survive in the streets and on the rooftops of London. Peter’s dream has been to grow up and be just like his “Jimmy.” If he proves himself worthy, he hopes someday that Jimmy will treat him as his equal.

But Jimmy’s personal ambitions have no room for another. The opportunity comes through Neverland to realize his goals of attaining respectability, even deity, in the dark world of London by exploiting the almost heavenly world of Neverland.

Through most of the movie, Peter saves, defends and serves a man who continually lies to him, betrays and uses him. But as the one with the innocent heart trying to protect Neverland, Peter repeatedly ends up in a sword fight against his mentor who eventually exposes his selfish, scheming heart.

In one climactic scene, Jimmy reveals that he was the one who killed Peter’s father out of jealousy and hatred. Jimmy had loved Peter’s mother, but his father had won her heart. Peter is broadsided by a double betrayal. In that moment, he realizes that Jimmy is not the man or “father” Peter thought he was. And his world and his dream is exposed for what it is—a fantasy.

At the end of the movie, what now becomes the beginning of the classic story, Peter chooses to leave his fantasy world and stay in Neverland, his new reality. But so does Jimmy, now Captain Hook minus one hand. In this story, it’s Peter who severs Hook’s hand, not the dreaded crocodile. And when he does, he has the opportunity to end Jimmy’s life and be rid of his betrayer who murdered the only one who probably loved Peter as a true father. But Peter chooses not to kill Jimmy. He chooses not to be like his mentor/fake father. Peter proves to be the better man.

As I thought about what Peter’s new reality would now entail, it occurred to me that I’m not sure Neverland would be a better world for him. Neverland. The place where the child remains a child and the adult an adult. The place where people never change. Neverland is now Peter’s world of constant betrayal. He can never grow up and move on and his enemy will never die of old age since Peter has chosen to spare his life. Neverland is a Foreverland of conflict and reminders of his deep pain, of the terrible Betrayal.

I would not want to live in Neverland—even if I could fly with pixie dust. I have my own story of being betrayed as do others I know. Just that afternoon, before I watched Neverland in the evening, I sat with someone and heard her story of a terrible betrayal, even two: a brother who forged her name on financial documents while she lay in a hospital bed fighting for her life against a dreaded cancer and a father who chose his son over a daughter who needed his protection.

There are other stories, like the brother who stole the money needed to care for a mother suffering from Alzheimer’s…the father who did despicable things to an innocent young girl…the pastor who used power to damage his flock or seduce one of the sheep…the husband or wife who found comfort in the arms of another, and not necessarily of the opposite gender...

…the religious leaders who should welcome the Messiah but instead crucify him…the disciple who should have loved Jesus but instead betrayed him.

In those moments when I think about the one who betrayed me (don’t worry – it’s not my husband!) and I start to feel the pain again, I redirect those thoughts and the pain toward the Cross and I remember the Betrayal of Christ. It had to happen that way. Betrayal is what brought hope and redemption and a real Foreverland. Betrayal opened up possibilities of reconciliation in our dark world as well as certainty of reconciliation in our Forever World.

But in this in-between time, in our “stories in the middle,” we struggle through the “how” of a resurrection life in the midst of a broken world where we might not get the “I’m sorry” and we might not be able to have the relationship we once had. Forgiving the betrayer is difficult and forgetting is nearly impossible. And if there are moments when you are forced to face the betrayer, you have to choose between either getting in a sword fight or walking away. Or maybe you choose imperfect reconciliation.

Or, because you are not strong enough to constantly face the betrayer, you have to leave and find a new community. This one is tough on two fronts. It gets complicated to know how to continue relationships from the old community because no one knows the full story of the betrayal. Not even the betrayer. Not even the betrayed. But what can be known is often rejected because most people, especially Christians, don’t know what to do with stories of betrayal. It’s too threatening. The fantasy world must be preserved at all costs.

On the other front, because the betrayal has torn down your fantasy of the community you were in, it raises questions of what was real and what was not. If you are fortunate, you start to re-engage a new community but it’s with the condition that authenticity, honesty and brokenness are celebrated alongside reconciliation, redemption and a lot of patience with each other. And there’s no guarantee you’ll get it. If you were fooled once, who’s to say, you won’t be fooled again. It takes a lot of faith and trembling to step back in and risk once again.

The only answer is a new perspective of the fantasy world and the “real” world. It can only be found at the Cross. It can only be gained through repentance. It can only be understood through the Gospel story that takes my past, my present “middle” and my future and offers healing, hope and eventual reconciliation, even with my betrayer.

In Christ’s “Neverland” we will never grow old. And we will never be betrayed again.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev. 21:1-4) 

Neverland was a good story---but I like this one better.

Green gecko

Here's a different "story in the middle" for you...a green gecko.

Actually, a dead green gecko.

I told this story to a dear friend who was describing the battle she was having with geckos in her house (she lives in Tanzania). So far the score was Gecko 2, Friend 0, Tie 1. Growing up in Okinawa meant growing up with geckos and cockroaches. In my mind geckos were good while cockroaches were gross. Geckos were good to keep around for eating mosquitoes and spiders. It only got gross if I accidentally shut the door on them and their tails dropped off, wiggling at my feet. (Geckos would then escape and grow their tails back.)

So here's my story:

When I was in elementary school, I was invited to a birthday party for a boy from my class. Unfortunately, I had procrastinated in getting to the store to buy a gift. So on the day of the party, I frantically looked around the house for a suitable treasure to wrap and take to the party. As I looked in my bedroom, I was delighted to find sitting on the window sill a perfectly preserved skeleton of a large green gecko. Of course, it was no longer green. Apparently it had been caught in the middle between the screen and the glass window and probably died of starvation. I picked it up carefully, found an appropriate sized box and wrapped it. As my father drove me to the party, I couldn't help but grin, expecting my gift to be the hit of the party. And indeed, the boy loved it! But I don't think it was a hit with the other kids.

After the party, my father picked me up to take me home. Either remembering he had not driven me to the store to buy a gift or realizing he had not seen a gift on the way there (I had tucked the small box in my pocket), he asked me what I had given my friend. So I told him. Boy, was my dad furious! And probably embarrassed that I had given such a grisly gift. He didn't believe me when I told him the boy liked the gecko skeleton and was not insulted.

He promptly drove me to the store, made me purchase a leather wallet (I secretly wished for a gecko-skinned wallet out of spite), and drove me back to the boy's house so I could hand him this proper, but boring gift. Deep down I still believed my gecko was the better find.

Renamed

"Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel..."


The story of Jacob in Genesis 32 has always been one that I identified with during much of my spiritual journey. My normal MO was to figure out life on my own until I ran out of ideas or resources and then turn to God if I have to. Sometimes God would interfere with my plans and suggest another one. My first response was to resist and wrestle. Like Jacob, I ended up losing - God is definitely GOD.

However, over the years, I have noticed a slow but definite change taking place in my normal pattern. I find myself going to God sooner and resisting less. Instead of wrestling, embracing. Rather than pushing against Him, resting into Him.

Last weekend while on a retreat with a group of women, I came to the end of my wrestling career. I decided that from now on I want my pursuit of God to be characterized by a pursuit of rest, stillness and contentment in Christ. Admittedly I expect that there will still be times of wrestling in my future, but no longer will I describe my spiritual life predominantly in terms of wrestling as I have for most of my life. In fact, last week I came to embrace my new name.

What new name you ask? While I was in China, my translator had given me a new name. This is a common practice there, at least in the context I was in as a foreign Christian speaker and teacher. I could not choose my Chinese name; someone else had to give it to me after observing me and getting to know me.

After hearing most of my talks which varied in topics, FangFang chose one: An Ran (安然). It means one who is at rest, safely, peacefully. I loved the name she chose, though I struggled to pronounce it accurately. But I didn't understand the significance of my new name until last weekend. Before I could embrace that name, I had to leave behind my old one: one who fights God.

Then this morning at church, Pastor Rick preached on Jacob's renaming and I realized that I needed to leave behind another old name - Harriet.

Don't worry. I'm still expecting to be called "Harriet." But I'll confess that I have always disliked my name. During my childhood I hated it when some jerk called me "Harry It" (from the TV series, The Munsters). Lamenting my given name, I asked my father why he chose such an old fashioned one. He said it was the closest English name he could think of to my mother's, Haruko. (He also used the same logic for my middle name, Nori, which was the closest Japanese equivalent to my grandmother's name, Nora. Unfortunately, Nori means either glue or seaweed. Lovely.)

Trying to reconcile with my name got even more difficult after I became a Christian. Constantly confronted with descriptions of the ideal Christian woman and wife (quiet and submissive), I felt like a failure in trying to live up to those qualities since I was raised to be independent and self sufficient on top of having the personality of a fighter. I felt more hopeless when I found out what "Harriet" meant: ruler of the home. I was doomed!

Until this morning.

My spiritual journey has brought me to this place of renaming. Living with Jon for the past 32 years has taught me to co-rule our home in mutual love, respect and submission. But living with Christ for even longer has taught me I am no longer ruler of my heart. Christ is. My new name is An Ran.

"Your name will no longer be Ruling, but Resting..."

Lend me your ear

“I don’t want it to go in one ear and out the other.”

There was a time when idioms were dangerous territory for me. Whenever I shot off my mouth and used an idiom, I would regret it as soon as I saw looks of puzzlement on the face of the unfortunate listener. To avoid anyone thinking I was not playing with a full deck, I’d feign an intelligent expression on my own face. That way they might question whether it was their own fault for not listening better or for not understanding my complex thinking.

From the time I arrived in the United States for college after graduating from high school in Japan, I’d listen for American idioms, analyze their usage and then insert them into my own conversations. More often than not my attempts at sounding like an “American” with slang and idioms went down like a lead balloon. It drove me up a wall.

Why do we use idioms? I decided to ask Google and found this answer at one site: “We use idioms to express something that other words do not express as clearly or as cleverly. We often use an image or symbol to describe something as clearly as possible and thus make our point as effectively as possible.”

Today was the kind of day I should have had the book, 101 American English Idioms. I spent three and one half hours discussing a long letter I had written presenting some important concerns and arguing for a certain viewpoint. I worked hard to communicate my passion without making the reader feel like I had an axe to grind. The person with whom I was conversing was sympathetic to my concerns and wanted to discuss how I could make my letter more “effective” for the group of people I was addressing.

He recognized that I had poured my heart out in this letter. But I also had to make it clear that I was not demanding that we all be on the same page, though I certainly hoped for it. I just didn’t want my concerns to go in one ear and out the other. Interesting idiom.

In the context of an attempt to be persuasive about anything, how does one avoid your words “going in one ear and out the other”? Put another way, if you are trying to explain or even convince another of your viewpoint, how do you make it settle “between the ears”?

Aristotle identifies three modes of speech that must be used in order to persuade well: logos (appeal to reason), ethos (appeal to a way of being), and pathos (appeal to the affections). In my situation, I was shooting for pathos while desiring but not demanding agreement in my use of logos and ethos. In my letter, I chose to tell my story as an invitation to enter into my world, to feel something of my struggle and to empathize with me.

Of course, I also included logical and theological reasons, but my definition of effectiveness included more than just understanding those reasons. I would reckon my letter to be effective if the recipients understood and felt the reasons why I wrote it. Because of the highly charged issue I was addressing, it would require them to discipline their own feelings and resist knee jerk reactions of possible defensiveness, intimidation or outright rejection in order to leave their own world of understanding and enter into my world. I know this is not easy to do. And it leaves me open to the accusation that I have a chip on my shoulder.

So, in the terms of this particular idiom, my definition of “effective” communication is the successful transfer of my story between my own two ears to the space between my listener’s ears. Then perhaps my words won’t go in one ear and out the other. I have no idea if I will be successful, but all I can do right now is ask,

“Please, lend me your ear.”

"What do you do?"

“So, what do you do?”

For now I hate that question. But I understand why the question was asked by many of the newly reconnected friends. I was recently at my high school reunion. It had been 37 years since I graduated so the yearbooks scattered in the hospitality suite were a lifesaver. I did not recognize most of the faces, but neither did anyone else. No matter how our current body images compared to our yearbook pictures, one thing was certain. We all had aged.

And we all had stories to tell from our journeys since leaving the tiny subtropical island of Okinawa. I would venture to say that most, if not all, probably had stories we never could have foreseen. At this stage in our lives, we had no reason to compare and compete with each other’s stories. We were way past that. As I heard many stories, good ones as well as painful, I observed an absence of masks, a willingness to be vulnerable. The stories were told without excuse or defense. The atmosphere was fragrant with honesty and unpretentiousness.

The only thing that unsettled me was that question. As I said earlier, I understood the question to be a natural one. It was not framed by a need to compare, but by a desire to know me. Yet this question exposed my current “story in the middle.”

I’m not sure what I do.

I mean, I do a lot, but I don’t have a focused “do.” I don’t have a job or career. I’m not pouring myself into one ministry. My weeks start out fairly free but then fly by because I find plenty to do and people to meet with. Now that my husband is retired (sort of), we are enjoying our time together, making up for all the time we sacrificed to raise our kids and he sacrificed to provide so I could stay home. But I am not ready to retire.

Instead I find myself in this in-between life stage. I’ve lived 55 years, been a Christian for 39 of those 55, a wife for 32 and raised 3 sons. In those years I have accumulated stories that are beginning to reveal themes and to lay a pattern that I hope reveals God’s purposes for the last stages of my life. Lord willing, I may have 30 more years of productive life to live. But I have yet to hit my stride. I have yet to say with confidence, “This is what I was born for. This is what I was created to do.”

So I wait. I stay in this “story in the middle.” I resist discouraging thoughts like “It’s too late” or “I’m too old” or “I’m not good enough.” Instead I keep pursuing Christ who knows me, grows me and shows me, not necessarily the road, but just the next step. And I remember that “late” is irrelevant to the eternal and sovereign God, “old” is appreciated when accompanied by wisdom and maturity, and what is truly “good” can only be declared by God.

If anyone else asks me “What do you do?” this is what I will answer.

I can tell you what I’ve done. I can tell you what I hope to be doing. But what I am doing now is enjoying everything I can do while I wait for God to connect what I’ve done with what I will be doing.