Naming — Madeleine L’Engle Reflection

Coffee ☕️ ✅ Fire 🔥 ✅ Book 📕 ✅

Best way to start the day. Big work day.

Here’s the morning reflection from my reading in Madeleine L’Engle’s book “A Wind in the Door.” This is the second book in the “Wrinkle in Time” series.

There’s something cosmic happening in this story, and that’s why I love Madeleine’s books. Scripture does this too, but our familiarity, or lack thereof, prevents us from seeing it without outside help all too often. We keep telling the same story again and again in the way we can understand in our day to remember who We are and who God is.

What stuck out to me this morning, bc I talked about this in a real example last week, is there’s this force on earth called Echthroi. War and hate are their business, and their chief business is un-Naming people to make it happen. It is important to make people not know who they are to justify war and hate. If someone knows who they are, deep down in their core, then they will have no reason to hate. And that’s why we still need Namers. When everyone is really and truly Named, then the Echthroi will be defeated.

Meg Murray has been identified as a Namer. She’s struggling with her own hate of someone. If she cannot find it in herself to love him so she can Name him rightly, then she will in fact be un-Naming him just like the Echthroi. (Love your enemies comes to mind here).

This quote from the cherubim Proginoskes to Meg: love. That’s what makes persons know who they are. You’re full of love Meg, but you don’t know how to stay within it when it’s not easy.

(Oh, I felt that quote).

I think about the post I made last week about Our political leaders putting out ads and naming people rapists, thieves,violent criminals, etc., as if that is their Name. They are un-Naming people. Interesting they don’t see it in themselves, but that is because they have been un-Named too. They have a need for hate in order to win, so they do not know who they are either.

I said my job as a faith leader is to help people understand their Name is Beloved. No matter what you’ve done, your identity is meant to be Love. We will work to find that core self. The self that has no need for war or hate because you know who you are.