Nicknames

In church yesterday a friend called me Anne Marie. “Oh, I said, if you love me, please just call me Annie.” “I thought you were changing your name now, moving on to a new phase of life, something like that.”   Well, yes, I thought so too, like Elai, my Counter-culture-child, who was born Ruth. But I realize I just don’t like it. It’s fine for medical staff to call me Anne Marie, because I REALLY don’t like Annnn, but if you love me, call me Annie.

Yes, my legal name is Annnn, as my mother reminds me, but all my life I’ve been Annie. I even persuaded Robert to call me Annie, despite his first instinct that Annie was an airhead name. (I’m a lot of things, but airhead is not one of them.) In Spanish it was easy because I was Anita to friends growing up and then just Ana. Neither of these have the abrupt sound of Annnn, which sounds like a scolding. (And to my friends called Ann, PLEASE bear with me. It’s all about what you’re used to. Our kids have godparents called Bobby, and Bob, and no one minds, but if you were to try that nickname on Robert, you’d get…corrected. A cop tried it once...)

Nicknames matter. Xiomara from Honduras messaged me recently, and in her prayer for me, she called God Abba. Papá. Daddy. Dad. Personally, praying in Greek doesn’t do it for me, but the word  implies this incredible father-daughter intimacy. Elai calls her dad “Api.”  No one else in the world calls him “Api.” There could be a thousand kids calling out, but like those thousands of penguins squawking who still hear their one mate, that “Api” would instantly connect two people like nothing else. Because when we love one another, our real names tend to slide away, and we call each other nicknames. Terms of Endearment. Honey, Pumpkin, Buddy, Sweetie, (in Honduras it could even be mi negra, “My Black One,” or my gordita, “My Little Fattie”).

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, they had heard it said by their spiritual leaders that God’s personal name was unpronounceable. God was too distant to be addressed by name. Jewish spiritual leaders had been saying this for millenniums, since they had refused to accompany Moses up on Mt Sanai to meet God. “No, you go. We are afraid of Him.” (Hey the mountain was thundering and quaking; would you have gone up?) By the time Jesus was born, the very sounds of God’s personal name had been lost, and God was very distant, indeed.

Jesus takes care of that with just one word: Abba. Father. Dad. Suddenly, God was right there, sitting on the mountaintop with them. A wise man once said: “a convict has a number instead of a name…But a man in his own house may also lose his name, because he is called simply 'Father.' That is membership in a body. The loss of the name in both cases reminds us that there are two opposite ways of departing from isolation.” So God loses his Name to us, and we lose ours to God. You know that stone we get after The End with its new name? I don’t know everything going on there, but I bet something on that stone is a term of endearment: “my Daughter, my Love.” Because it’s marriage we’re headed for, and what do you call each other when no one is listening?

So Robert says technically Annie isn’t a nickname; it’s a derivative, (uh, huh, but how am I going to call my post Derivative? Sounds like a calculus class. Hmm. Now there’s a post.) Ann, and even Anne Marie seem to hold me at arm’s length. I can’t explain that. It’s just true. So if you can call me Annie, do. I will know you are a friend of mine.

P. S. that quote took me EIGHT HOURS and eight bucks to nail. I had to have it. I MISS MY LIBRARY! Brownie points for anyone who gives me chapter and verse. Answer tomorrow.