The Name

What name do you like to be called? Why?

For reasons I only now understand I had never held on to my name as something important – and have been content with names people called me, or that which was expedient to the context in which I was working. I frequently had problems remembering peoples names though frequently could remember the first letter or what they did! I recognise now that this is probably aphasia, or one of the other speech/word brain dysfunctions labels. I saw myself in terms of what I did, not who I was.

I had reasons to doubt the value of my existence as I was illegitimate, a failed abortion and unwanted as a girl. All three of these factors leave deep scars on the soul and spirit. But I was baptised in the Name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as a baby, and I was given courage and grace to live through my grey childhood, and further abuse, and even passed to Grammar School, two years after the final assault on my body that left me for dead. People were brought into my life during Grammar School years to enable me to pass O levels, and 2 A levels , which got me into teacher education. Then after 3 years teaching PE in a Secondary school came two Advanced diplomas: 1. to help understand the physchology of movement and learning, then 2.the teaching of Special Educational Needs. After 7 years as Head of Special Needs in a Primary School, because my job was disappearing with reorganisation, I did an MA in Applied Research in Education . At the end of the MA I was offered a PhD studentship. I resigned from teaching.

Whilst I was doing my PhD and in the two years after, I worked with teachers in the first month of the MA research course they were undertaking. One of the tasks I set them was to write a poem ‘beyond themselves’. I did it too – and it began:

I peer out from behind expectations –

And wonder Who am I?

It went on in poetic form to acknowledge that in the right time and place I would find out.

So I lived with this mystery within me, also having proclaimed as a 18yr old my faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, though having no commitment to the church – except to the Guidelines of the Quakers that I was led to as a young teacher: 1.There is that of God in all people; 2. Moderation in all things: 3. Serving God by serving humanity.

I ‘knew’ as head knowledge, nothing about God, and by the end of the PhD and my marriage and family breakdown I had lost all sense of direction, except needing a job, and I could no-longer hear my heart. But in a moment of despair when the man I was living with didn’t want to marry me, I was crying on the bed, with no one to go to. I ‘heard’ my name. I didn’t immediately think ‘Oh there is God, all will be well’. But something deep within was comforted and following that I started to see things happening for my greater good. I wanted to thank this ‘Thing” that was helping me, and started to go to the nearest church to thank Him. That was the beginning of knowing I was loved, cared for, and, in His Kingdom, my name mattered because it was bound up with Him in His suffering.

I now know in theory and practice that His Name is the Name above all names, and at His Name every knee will bow, in humility and love, praise for God and His beauty, and total surrender to His purposes, one day at a time. Only when I had consciously chosen for Christ within the church, did I start to think about my name. I chose for my Change of Name Deed my middle Welsh name and my Mother’s maiden name. Some years later when I moved into the Orthodox church I was Chrismated with the name of Marina, a martyr, knowing that God wanted to bring my martyred broken life alive. He has worked in the last 30 years to build what is good, to uproot what is destructive, to heal what is broken, and give life to the dead. In truth He is mine and I am His. His Name is above all, and the source of all grace and life.