..."see ya later marchy", fi bid me as i rode off to lunch on sunday..."marchy", is a name that i grew to hate while i was at school...sure its innocuous enough - simply using my last name and adding a 'y' to the end...but it was a name that has not had great connotations for me...you see, i think a name is certainly something highly emotional if not spiritual...



...thruout the bible we see the huge significance of names...god creates adam (meaning 'the man' in hebrew, also sounding like the hebrew for 'earth')...and also gives him responsibility for naming the creatures of the earth...jacob is renamed israel (out of whom the people of israel were descended)...abram's name was changed to abraham after god's covenant with him and sarai (who also changed her name to sarah)...jesus was also called emmanuel (god with us) to signify his incarnation on earth and saul changed his name to paul...

...but so what? well, back to my name...

...it seems to me that there are three categories of people at school...



...those who are the popular kids, who have the cool friends, the teachers quietly like their rebellious, adult-like attitude...

 

...then there are those who quietly get on with school, have their own small group of friends, don't really feature much in the memories of many but school is manageable...



...i then think there are those for whom school is a struggle...it may be that they kick against the system so much that the system spits them out, or it may be that the system isn't an issue, more the people that that individual finds themselves with...they may not fit in, not in the cool crowd, the sporty crowd, the 'clever' crowd...just someone who doesn't really fit anywhere...

...i guess the third one is the one i found myself for the majority of my time at school...and this isn't intended to be a self-indulgent sob story...mores to say that i never really fitted in...i was the only christian in my school...and altho this was a feature of my isolation, it would be unfair to suggest that my faith was the reason that others isolated me...i guess by being a christian and a stubborn one at that, it meant i isolated myself...i didn't particularly find the party scene an attractive one...i wasn't any good at sport and i couldn't be bothered with school work...i guess the only think that drove me was seeing god at work...but as i was the only one that way motivated...it left me pretty isolated...



...all thru school i had many names ('monkman' has to be seen as one of the best)...but the most common was 'marchy'...often by people who didn't really know me...usually the cool kids...so i guess its been hard to hear since...

...but why is a name so significant for us humans and seemingly for god?...i think for several reasons...a name tells us who we were...our parents, our past, our friends, our enemies, our hurts, our fears, maybe also our hopes unrealised...it also tells us who we are...how we relate to people now, how we want people to see us, and maybe what we hope to be...but i think finally it tells us who we were created to be...how our heavenly father sees us, without the masks we put on, without the shields we put up, and without the connotations that put us down...



...i am 'jonathan' to my parents because that is what they named me as they held me...it tells me of their relationship with me, unique to them...i am 'jon' to my friends, colleagues and aquaintances because that is the name i chose for myself, the name i own and is about the person i have become since leaving home...and i have nicknames too, all unique to their users, all affectionately used...all about who 'jon march' is to them...all except one...

...it's funny, after i left school 'marchy' was never picked up as a nickname by anyone else...except now...quite a few of my good friends here at htb (including fi) with no prompting have begun to call me 'marchy'...it was hard to hear at first but i think god is beginning to redeem the one name i never owned...

...it still feels funny when it is used...but i know it is never now said with the same implicit meaning as i experienced at school..it's like all things that hurt...sometimes you have to go back and break thru the hurt in order to redeem and reclaim part of who you were made to be...