What Is Your Good Name?

A Reflection for XV Pentecost (proper 18)               All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC September 6, 2015                                                            Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23          James 2:1-10 -17               Mark 7:24-37

What is Your Good Name?

From the first lesson for today from the Book of Proverbs: “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.” Years ago at a clergy conference, we had a seminary professor lead us through parts of the book of Proverbs. She warned us not to tell our parishioners to read the book of Proverbs straight through because they wouldn’t get anything out of it. She suggested that the best way to read the book is one Proverb at a time, one day or even one week at a time. Read one proverb right after you wake up and try to memorize that one verse. Say the proverb again at breakfast - reflect on it - what does it mean for you?  At your coffee break, say the proverb aloud to yourself. Repeat and reflect at lunch, at midafternoon break, at dinner, and before going to bed.  Try to live into the proverb so that you have brought it into your life. Some of the proverbs will be a waste of your time, but others contain wisdom passed on through centuries. Knowledge comes from outside oneself, but Wisdom comes from the heart of the true self within oneself.

In the Gospel story from Mark for today, Jesus tries to get away from people, but his good name precedes him, the name made not of letters and words but of love. We remember Jesus not for his miracles but for the fact that he was the embodiment of the compassion of God, and we take his good name as strength and a model. 

Last month I finished a book by David Brooks called The Path to Character in which he posits that there is a difference between a resume and a eulogy. A resume is a document that represents to people who do not know you what skills and talents that you possess for a position that you are interested in filling.  The resume says that this is what you can do. A resume after you die is called an obituary and it tells the things that you have done. 

I remember about 20 years ago when my mother called me and shared that she was distressed to read in the Carolina Alumni Association bulletin the notice of my death.  It made no mention of my marriage, my child, my going to seminary or my ordination - it only listed my degrees from Carolina, social work experience, and the college in which I had taught. I too was saddened to have had only a partial resume and not to have merited a eulogy. I wrote the Alumni Association suggested that, while the time of my death seemed to correspond to the time when Pat and I were in Egypt and visited the “City of the Dead”, a collection of mortuary Temples and Tombs on the West Bank of the Nile from Luxor, and while I had enjoyed visiting the Tombs, I decided not to remain there full time. 

Apparently there was another Carolina graduate with a similar name - Tommy Wilson, instead of Thomas E. Wilson - who was also teaching there at the college in another department, and he had died. When the Alumni Association wrote to me suggesting that I needed to give money, the letter was noted by a secretary who had been hired after I left to go to seminary ten years before and she returned the letter, writing on the outside that Tommy Wilson had died. The Association called and checked and the receptionist confirmed the bad news, so the newsletter went out to let my classmates know not to expect me at the reunion.  

Unlike a resume, a eulogy is an exercise undertaken by someone after you die which attempts to  share that part of your character that remains living in the community after your death. The word eulogy comes from the Greek of “eu” meaning good and “logos” meaning words, or good words about how God was made real in this person’s life. In his book, Brooks looks at the lives of people to share the character traits we need to have a society worth saving. All of the people chosen were complex people and had lapses and failures in their lives, but they also had character traits that live after them. In essence the book is an extended metaphor on the first of the Proverbs in today’s first lesson. “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.”

In Othello, Shakespeare has Iago, pretending to be afraid of being accused of slander, mouth these lines:

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

In the bulletin for today, the meditation question is “What is your good name?” Too often we wait until we are near death before we take the time to think about what our good name is. Pat and I went out to lunch this week and I asked her to tell me her character traits, and she got all sorts of humble because she had always been taught to not sound like she was boasting. I reminded her that we had read Richard Rohr’s reflection for that day over breakfast where he said:

We all need such inner experience instead of simple outer belief systems. You need inner experience whereby you can know things to be true for yourself instead of believing them because other people say they are true. This is second-hand religion or hearsay religion which is unfortunately the most common variety. 

Finally after much prodding, she allowed that she only hoped that people would say that she was a “Wise Woman”.  By this she meant that she goes deep into herself to touch the wisdom that comes from being in touch with the collective unconscious - for wisdom comes from within, and she picked good people as models, and she learned from her mistakes. Confucius said: “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

I tried to prime the pump, and she accepted that she is a faithful friend, an extravagant lover of God and neighbor, an appreciator of the beauty she experiences through eye and ear, a fearsome foe to the mean-spirited, fearless in her loyalty to victims of injustice, and a seeker of peace. That I see is part of her good name that she lives into.

We are at the point of our life where we are going to have to down-size. The house that we love, the art collection we have, the money we have in the bank, the clothes which stuff our closets – none of these will outlast us. What will survive is our true self, our soul, which will return to the One in whom we had our beginning and on this plane of existence, we leave our good name.

What is your good name?

What is My Good Name? (poem)

When I asked why he did call me “Thomas”,

father joked it is a guy in a bar on that night

I was born. A girl friend said “Less a promise

made and more a Michael would been right.”

Good names are not made of molded syllables

of written characters, but a sum total character

of the who, which outlives concluding syllabus

for the deeds or goods of a once one-time rector.

Titles held, deeds done, hours given, words said,

written, or recited; all will in memory fade away.

Will compassion last longer than my hair once red,

even with greater spirit than that good gin Bombay?

When the rain of hundreds of storms turn buried ashes

into richer earth, I hope my spirit will speak in silence

of the graves to the lives my soul did touch in flashes

of the passion given me, and from birth, I had reliance.

Iago’s pretend fear of slander is not my today’s threat.

Good name is not a what, a hole to fill; but the whole

of being, that each day I am tempted to pawn in debt

for clutter of that God gifted center of this eternal soul.