麻豆约拍

Good morning.
When I travel, I often have to repeat my name. I don鈥檛 mind. I understand that Irish names are unfamiliar to people, and so if I want my name to be heard properly, I find first that I have to repeat it a few times.

Others have often had to do the same for me when their names were unfamiliar to me.
What鈥檚 important is that our names are important.
In Tolkien鈥檚 Middle Earth, two Hobbits are walking in an unfamiliar wood. They meet a talking tree, an Ent. The Hobbits are hasty in sharing their names, but when they ask the tree his name and he says:
鈥渋t would take a long while鈥�my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to鈥�
The Hebrew tradition has a practice of giving God a name, based on a place of worship or experience. So God is called
The Lord my Banner
The Nurturer and Provider聽
The Lord who Heals
The Muslim Tradition tells of the ninety nine beautiful names of God, citing Allah The Exceedingly Compassionate and Gracious.
In Christianity, we hear Jesus of Nazareth teach his followers to call God Abba, Father.
In Zulu, one of the names for God is 鈥淣kulu-nkulu鈥� which means 鈥淏ig-big鈥�.
We give God names based on the stories of our lives. As the Ent said, Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to.
God beyond all names
Even though no name is sufficient
every name can be beautiful.
So we call you friend,
knowing that you, too, call us friend.
Help us see friendship at the heart of every name.
Amen.