Names

I walked out to get my every-morning-necessary-to-function coffee last week and found my daughter at the kitchen table, fully ready to go to school. She had her laptop open and I asked what she was working on. She said she was practicing pronouncing country names correctly for a school presentation that day on cholera. As a good epidemiologist-mom, I looked through the slides with her as we talked about incidence, mortality rates, treatments, and vaccine inequities related to cholera. What struck me the most though was that she was taking some extra early-morning time to say country names correctly.

Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Lesotho, Haiti. I asked her why she was doing it and, without hesitation, she said, “I want to get it right for them.” The “them” is the people living in those countries. She was honoring them, our global neighbors, even though we live miles and miles away and she’s never been to those countries. But, she knew somehow that going this extra step did the honoring. In other words, I think she acted like a neighbor. None of us have to go through that extra step of correctly pronouncing names of countries or names of people, for that matter. But doing so shifts us from talking about people to talking with them, beside them. I think that’s equity too, don’t you? I think when we take the time to honor someone else’s culture, accent, name, language, upbringing, and personhood, especially when it’s different than our own, it slows us down to recognize the person and everything they bring with it. Including the image of God.

“And, God created them in his own image (Genesis 1)” reminds us of this too. So does Genesis 5, “He made them in his own likeness”. When we honor people by pronouncing their names correctly, honoring their cultures, and listening to their accents, we have an opportunity to see more of the fullness of His Likeness.

I’m thinking about that a lot this week alongside the suffering of the earthquake in Turkiye and Syria.

(photo from here)

Many of us can’t physically go over there and help. But, we can donate money to a reputable organization. We can check in on our friends that have family there and ask how they are really doing. Or better yet, take a meal over. We can recognize the holy likeness is our global neighbors. And, take some time to get names correctly.

If you’re looking for somewhere to send money to support the earthquake survivors, here’s a link from David Beasley at the World Food Programme.

-Emily