Names

Rachel.
John.
Hannah.
Matt.
Beka.
Jesus.
Stephen.
Sarah.
Clive.
David.
Bono.

Eleven names. Eleven people. Eleven different viewpoints on life. Some of them I have met. Some of them I know intimately. Others not so well. Some have sadly left this earth. Others are just beginning their journey. Yet this list of people - my friends, my influences, my inspirations, and right there in the middle, my all - could very well mean absolutely nothing to you.

Chances are you're reading this after you just clicked a link which lead you to this page. The first thing you saw (after the rather large title & photograph) was a picture of a signature and then a list of names. All of which (saving the all-important middle one and the well-known end one) you probably didn't recognize. They were just names.
Just names.

But...

To me, these names have faces. They have writings, songs, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, ideals and dreams much more than any odd combination of letters would have. A name is something we give or we receive. And like it or not, it marks us for life. It defines us in a sense, so that people can say our name and then list our achievements. Or possibly our shortcomings. It is the sole title given to any work that we alone produce. We own that. And our name owns us.
So then a name is a lot more than just "a name".

I've been thinking about names a lot lately. Mostly because I'm terrible with them. Yeah sure, I can spout off a list of them like the above one as quick as a wink (although I did have to Google CS Lewis' first name). But those are people I know: either who's writings and work I've followed or someone who I've held a decent conversation with. Or in the case of Jesus far more than all that. But when it comes to remembering names of people I don't routinely talk to or read of, I'm pretty hopeless. In a tutorial I had at Massey in the last week we had to introduce ourselves to the rest of our classmates, however I found that within the space of about five minutes I'd forgotten everyone's name. Then there was the even more embarrassing situation when I was talking to a girl from Lifegroup at church and had to refer to as "this girl" because her name had completely slipped my mind. I don't know what it was, but for some reason names seemed to stick in my memory a lot less than faces and situations.


This week I have been challenged to take people a lot more seriously than I do.
A lot of the time for me it's just small talk and recognition and then I consider I "know" a person. And yet sometimes I can't even remember a simple thing such as their name! Have things really got that bad that I consider a friend to be just someone I know, when really it ought to be far more than just that?

Thanks to various people speaking into my life in different ways I realize that if I ever want to be fully real with people and with myself, I need to be intentional about things. I need to be intentional about my writings, my music, my everyday conversations. Sometimes we just say things for the sake of saying things. I've experienced enough of that lifestyle to know that in the end it is about as meaningless and empty as your going to get.

In a world full of different people with different stories, different hopes, dreams and fears there is so much that could be said. And it seems like such a awful waste to have all this time on the planet, all these words at our disposal and to not be doing anything with them! You never know what a person is going through and what something you might say could mean to them. Words are a lot more powerful than we give them credit, and music is almost more so (kind of what I was hinting at when I wrote the line "Why can't the songs tell our stories...?"). So what are we doing with them?

I know what I want to be doing.
Letting people know that they mean much more to me than I sometimes let on. Whether that's in a blog list, or in some other way I want to take time to say thanks.
Then I want to do make an effort to be intentional about things. About my relationships with people and with God. It's not going to be the easiest thing to do - there are going to be times when I slip up and find myself back in the uncaring stage. But I mean this when I say I firmly believe it is something worth doing.
To start conversations which go a lot further than small talk. To really pray from my heart rather than just my head. Maybe tell friends things I haven't before. Maybe open up a bit and leave space for people to do the same. To start stepping up to the mark in life and in faith instead of letting myself slip behind.

Or even to just remember a name...

Sincerely (for once),

Jordan Andrew Gowan.
Jaguar Falls.
Jord, Jaws, J-dog.

And in everything, Christ's.