In the Bible…humans are naming creatures…..
And let’s face it…
We love to name things.
Who wouldn’t love to name a dinosaur?
How about naming children?
What about when we tell a story, analyze it and figure out what is really going on so we can “name it”. Its important, its our job….its fun 🙂
Pretty much, we are learning creatures, and we love to name things.
So why do labels matter? Why does it matter what we call God? Why do we have so many names for God anyway…Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Light, Hope & Salt. And occasionally even refering to God as “She” you know for all the mothering, growing, birthing language
because we are naming creatures
So….when it comes to sexuality & gender which we suck at talking about in the church (to put it lightly)–this naming act is so important.
So…if you want to know why saying what your gender is, what pronoun you want to be referred to…and what kind of sexuality you express is so important…
(i.e. why this is so important)
….its because we are naming creatures.
God made us fluid beings, full of creativity and the ability to love. The ability to find new ways of expression.
Since when is life so limited
Since when is God so limited
I bet a thousand years from now we will still be discovering new, fantastic ways of being and naming them right and left….
because we are, at heart, a people who love to name things
And when someone names themselves for us…we should listen carefully and give that name back to them–in the pastoral and psychological world we call it reflective listening…after all we have a lot of things to name ourselves
Author: katyandtheword
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ.
She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible.
"Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal.
Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.
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