Glasses

I’ve discovered tonight why I love the written word.

Life happens in moments. A moment here, another moment there-all of these little moments string together like individual bulbs on a string of Christmas lights. Like photography, writing captures a moment-focuses in on it, and snaps it from a certain angle.  A part of the picture becomes more pronounced while another part fades into the background. Colors are brightened, faded, or changed to black-and-white, giving the viewer a new impression of a sight she thought she was already familiar with and assumed she already understood. Writing seizes a piece of life, frames it, and forces you to approach it from a different perspective, to see it with new vision.

I think that’s one of the reasons why the Word of God is so powerful. The Bible is like God’s Life-Goggles* that imparts 20/20 vision to its wearers. Significant things become significant; insignificant things fade into the background.

*Work cited: Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts

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Peter Henry

A couple days ago, a friend told me that her brother and his wife had just had their first baby. It was a boy!

Oh, how exciting! What’s his name? I asked.

Peter Henry. Peter is his first name and Henry is his middle name.

Peter Henry? I love it, I told her.

And I did. In fact, I loved it so much I was perplexed by my throughly satisfied response. My emotions seemed disproportionate to the situation; after all, my friend had only told me her nephew’s name.

But, on second thought, it made a lot of sense.  Why, I couldn’t think of a more normal name I’d heard in years! What with all of the Destinys and Apples cropping up everywhere, it seems as if our nation’s new favorite past time has become that of hoisting ever-more-outrageous (or “unique,” if you prefer) names upon our unsuspecting infants; the poor creatures don’t even have an opportunity to protest being called numbers (“Seven”), animals (“Puma”; “Sparrow”), careers (“Sailor”; “Racer”), superheroes (“Kal-el”), musical instruments (“Banjo”), cities (“Paris”; “London”), countries (“Egypt”), states-of-being (“Free”), celestial adverbs (“Heavenly”), various types of fruit (the aforementioned “Apple,” and “Peaches”), as well as random nonsensical syllables haphazardly (“carefreely?” “independently?” “defiantly?”) strung together (“Suri”; “Sosie”; “BreAzie”; “Knox”; “Dweezil”; etc.).*

I understand Individualism was woven into our nation’s psyche and has been an intrinsic part of our very way of life from its beginning, but I wonder if we have gotten a little carried away with it all if we’ve become convinced our uniqueness and inherent greatness have reached such lofty heights that we simply must bestow upon our children such exclusive and unprecedentedly bizarre names that everyone else will be reminded for the rest of their days of our and our children’s exclusive and inherent greatness.

Obviously, by no means do I think this now-common practice “bad” or “wrong”-I only find it hilarious and depending upon my mood, at times, irritating. I can remember one unique name in a graduating class of 300, but in twenty years, will my child have to remember 299 original and unique names in his or her graduating class? We can’t all be numbers, animals, careers, superheroes, musical instruments, cities, countries, states-of-being, adverbs, various types of fruit, and random nonsensical syllables strung together, can we?

I think there is some wisdom (not to mention, convenience) in a culture recycling 150 different names instead of inventing three million-and counting-“original,” personalized names.

When I have a child, I want to name him or her the most beautiful, normal name ever. Though at this rate, by the time my child enters school, his or her normal name may be the bizarre one!

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*All real names

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