Power in Naming Rev. Lissa Anne Gundlach May 26, 2013 All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City (Sung) Hush, Hush Somebody’s calling my name Hush, Hush Somebody’s calling my name Hush, Hush Somebody’s calling my name Oh my Lord, Oh my Lord What shall I do? I haven’t always loved my name. In my early childhood in South Carolina, my name was nearly impossible for my teachers and other students to pronounce. I remember the twangy “Lisa Anne” often rolling off of my first grade teacher’s tongue, and little me too embarrassed to keep correcting her. My younger brother and I would play a game where we pretended we had different names, and different personalities. My pretend name was, amusingly, Lisa. Lisa seemed so much easier, so much more intelligible to others. And then there was my last name—Gundlach- what a mouthful! Definitely not your typical Southern name. In my young adulthood, I became more connected with my German heritage. I came to feel proud of my name. Lissa, a unique name chosen for me by my parents after a close college friend, meaning honey bee in Greek. Anne, an English middle name from the Hebrew “Hannah” meaning “favor” or “grace” passed onto me from generations of women on my mother’s side. I use my middle name to honor that legacy of women, especially my grandmother Winnifred, to whom I significantly attribute my

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call to ministry. And then there is Gundlach, my father’s family name, linking me to my German immigrant ancestors of the early 1900s. Our names make us who we are. To be called by name is a part of our most essential and sacred initiation into the world. In our earliest moments, our parents or caregivers offered us names into which we would grow and learn the stories about their meaning. In this congregation, our dedication ceremonies announce the names of our newborns and young children into the community, recognizing their presence and dedicating ourselves to their nurture. Our names are how we come to know one another, to form relationships and join our lives together in a common story. In death, it is by our names that our legacies will be remembered. Some of us stay identified with our given names and some of us choose new names. There is a power in naming ourselves, of calling a new self into being. Traditionally, an important part of entering into a marriage commitment is the practice of a woman taking on their husband’s name. While still a respected though not uncriticized practice, over the past decades many couples have chosen to take on a new name together, hyphenating their names, blending their names together or creating a new name. Some men are now taking their wives’ last name to reverse the tradition. In a different context, for people of transgender experience, the process of choosing and adopting a new name is often a key part of their gender affirmation. Having your new name recognized by friends and family can be an essential and empowering part of a process of creating your own identity, whether as an individual or within a partnership. There is a power in naming our selves, and a power in the history of our names. Whether we inherit or choose our names, knowing the stories of our names can help us to understand who we are in the context of our culture, family and community. If we are American, the stories of our names often reflect our family’s complicated relationship to the forces of our American history, specifically, immigration and slavery. Many people of Eastern European Jewish heritage have explored the story of their family’s last name, discovering that their names were changed, not by their choosing, at an immigration checkpoint like Ellis Island. This name change could have 2

been because of their lack of knowledge of the English language, or perhaps to “help” them assimilate more easily into mainstream American culture. Knowing this about their names has helped them to feel more connected with their cultural heritage, and to dig deeper into their family’s past, far before their family’s days on American soil. Others discover that their name carries a history bearing the legacy of slavery. When New York based filmmaker and progressive media activist Macky Alston attended a racially-mixed Durham North Carolina school as a young child, he began to question how it came to be that he and his African American classmates shared the same last name. He asked himself the question “What will happen if I go looking for an African American Alston?” His documentary Family Name chronicles his journey to answer this question, uncovering his family’s painful slaveholding past and moving towards a powerful reconciliation of present generations. The film ends with the first ever gathering of black and white Alstons, who had before had only separate yearly family reunions. As James Baldwin once wrote, “History does not merely refer to the past… history is literally present in all that we do.” There is power in claiming our family history. There is also power in naming our relationship to our nation’s history, as complicated and sometimes painful as it may be. Feminist artist and activist Eve Ensler has written much about the power in naming, particularly naming what is taboo or difficult to speak. She writes: “I believe freedom begins with naming. Humanity is preserved by it.” I am thinking about the power in naming this Memorial Day. My family often gathers together in Maine each year for the holiday. We celebrate the living, with the birthdays of my mother and grandfather, and now my partner’s mother too. We remember the names of the dead, paying visits to seaside cemeteries and adorning the graves of our family members with bright red geraniums. Some names on the headstones are only familiar to older generations, and the older generations share these stories with the younger. Their individual stories fade without yearly revival- Aunt Marjorie, Aunt Dot, Nana Marion. Remembering their names helps keep their stories 3

alive as a part of our family history. Each year, I solemnly take note of the American flags adorning the graves of service men and women. In a way, they too become my family. Though none of their stories are familiar to me, I try their names my tongue and hold them in my memory, if only for a day. I wonder about their history. This week, the Department of Defense has identified 2,206 American service members who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans recently: Jeffrey C BAKER , 29 Mitchell K DAEHLING, 24 William J GILBERT, 24 Trenton L RHEA, 33 Cody J TOWSE, 21 Each one of these names has a family and history left behind. Each one of these names leaves a legacy in this world. This memorial day, here at All Souls we can lift up the names of these soldiers and the countless others who remain nameless. It is in lifting up their names that we help preserve their humanity and honor their history. We bridge their lives into our collective memory. We refuse to allow their individual stories to be disregarded in the great chasm of loss we call war. Memorial Day has a compelling history itself. After the tragic losses after the Civil War, Memorial Day began as “Decoration Day,” a collection of rituals and traditions to honor the sacrifice for the cause of emancipation and celebrate the end of slavery. Over 620,000 soldiers were killed in the war, 60% on the Union side and 40% confederate. David Blight, author of Race and Reunion: the Civil War in American History, writes “The most immediate legacy of the war was its slaughter and how to remember it. Death on such a scale demanded meaning.” The war began with the bombardment of the Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina in April of 1861. After the war ended in February of 1865, such meaning making was necessary for the battered community of Charleston. For the black community, the joy of emancipation was met with the terrifying specter of death 4

and destruction. There were so many dead to bury many were laid in makeshift graves. Many Union soldiers remained unidentified. To show respect for the dead and their service to the cause of emancipation, members of the Charleston community began informal ceremonial practices. Women would adorn the burial places of the Union dead, black and white, with fragrant lilacs and roses. The first formal Decoration Day was officially held May 1, 1865. It was an extremely elaborate affair, coordinated by an estimated ten thousand black South Carolinians and their white abolitionist allies. A formal burial ground was designated for the dead. Local ministers and leaders led remembrances for those killed, searching for the moral meaning of the war for the cause of emancipation and freedom for all people. They sung “John Brown’s Body” and read scriptures, perhaps the words from the Gospel of Matthew we heard this morning. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.” Decoration Day became known as Memorial Day in the late 1800s. In its early years of observation, Southerners and Northerners were divided about its purpose and intention. White Southerners contested the message of reconciliation and Union victory. An alternative Confederate Memorial Day is still a state holiday in many southern states. As the years progressed on towards World War I, Memorial Day became, as it is today, a rallying cry for national unity as wars were exported around the world. The story of Decoration Day has largely been lost in the power struggle for the identity of our nation, whose fault lines are still visible. What we can remember today is the intention of those first Decoration Days—a ritual of healing and reconciliation proclaiming an unyielding reverence for life. We can join the tradition of questioning the meaning of war and affirming the moral quest for deeper human freedom. We can grieve the loss and honor the lives of the war dead, joining their stories to ours in one human family. There is power in naming, in claiming our family history, in claiming our country’s history. The preservation of our humanity depends on it. 5

(Sung) Hush, Hush Somebody’s calling my name Hush, Hush Somebody’s calling my name Hush, Hush Somebody’s calling my name Oh my Lord, Oh my Lord What shall I do? Amen, and Blessed be.

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