by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM, January 1, 2017
No, this title is not a typo. I didn’t misspell the reference to a popular film. I didn’t fall victim to sugar overload or fuzzy thinking from one too many Christmas cookies (although I certainly did indulge). It’s not the result of a late night of ringing in the New Year.
So why The Hunger Names? Because it occurs to me as we stand peering into the year before us that so often the beginning of a new year centers around resolutions focused on what we want to let go of: extra pounds, unhealthy habits, toxic situations, and more. I wonder what might be revealed if instead we chose to spend time discerning what it is that we long to fill ourselves up with. What if we dug a bit deeper and named that for which we truly hunger? What if we spent some time early in this new year mining our deepest desires as well as God’s desire for each one of us?
There is great power in naming. Naming connotes belonging: parents often devote 
considerable time to choosing the perfect name for the child of their hopes and dreams. Naming shows connection: new owners may search for just the right title as they bring an adopted pet into their home. Naming witnesses to the intimacy and closeness of relationship: we tend to name what is significant and meaningful in our lives. And naming sometimes offers us a liberation of sorts when we’re able to voice what we hold in our hearts.
Not long ago, I was gifted with Joyce Rupp’s Fragments of Your Ancient Name. The book, subtitled “365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation,” highlights names by which God is known around the world. The names are drawn from many faith traditions, rituals, and contemporary writers, and the author explores each name in a brief meditation followed by a simple sentence as a takeaway into one’s day.
Of course, when it comes to naming the Divine, we come face to face with our limited understanding of the One Rabbi Rami Shapiro calls “The Reality Beyond Naming,” the One of whom Dorothee Soelle acknowledges, “There are never enough names and images for what we love.”
Edwina Gately bumped into this human limitation in a hermitage conversation. She recalls, “When I asked my God if I could come and stay with Him for a while, She said: ‘Yes, but don’t bring your God with you.’ Oh, how easy it is to clutter up the path to the Holy Spirit with my images and preconceptions of God! The mystical heart lets go of all images, icons, and expectations of God.”
Gately wasn’t dismissing or discouraging our attempts to name who God is for us. She was 
simply acknowledging the truth that God is so much bigger than we can ask or imagine and that we don’t ever want to close ourselves off from fresh revelations of the Divine. When we pay attention to the names of the Holy which most resonate with us, we can come to a revelation about who God is for us at this time in our lives: Dreamer? Lantern of Love? Mother of the Weary? One Who Weeps? The Opener or Beckoner? Sanctuary? Flute Player? Laughing One? Shelter? Friend of the Poor? Disturber? Lord of the Dance? Other? (a sampler from Fragments of Your Ancient Name)
Imagine what might happen if we widen the space of our tent and invite in words and images beyond our usual consciousness. Being open to the new in other cultures and faith traditions offers a fresh way to look at what God hopes and dreams for all people on this planet. Which names make us sit up, pay attention, and notice? Which names grab our soul? Which names shake our complacency? Which names stretch our borders? Which names do we find particularly tender, consoling, exciting, affirming, disturbing? And why?
As we search for words and images to describe the Holy One, our prayerful reflection may reveal something of our deepest desires for this new year and beyond. May it also reveal how God desires to be present in every moment of every day of this year ahead for all of our beautiful, yet wounded world.
Takeaway
Sit in God’s presence and reflect on your images of God.
What names of the Holy speak to you at this time in your life?
Which ones do you imagine might especially amuse or delight God?
For what are you hungering in this new year?
What is the Holy One desiring in you for the life of the world?
Happy New Year! Thank you for following or discovering this blog and for praying with me for a new year marked by peace and a deepened sense of the Holy in our world.
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evening of contemplative dialogue promising a safe, sacred, non-judgmental space for people to gather following the U.S. elections. It was an experience of practicing Isaiah’s admonition to enlarge the space of our tent. In this space, we committed to make room for the other, to listen and share with openness and respect around 3 questions:
These Advent images stand in stark contrast to what many have expressed as their feelings going into this season. In conversations, in faith sharing, in companioning people in spiritual direction, I’ve heard a litany of the same anguished life questions over and over: How can this be? What does this mean for people we love and care for, for people who feel unwanted and unheard? How are we called to be? And especially, where is God? I can resonate with all of these questions. Perhaps you can as well.
dark prison where he’s languishing, John the Baptist asks one of the most poignant questions in all of Scripture: “Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for another?” We can imagine the fragile hope, maybe desperation, behind John’s questions. As if he were really asking, “Tell me, have I been wasting my time? My life? Am I pointing in the right direction? Give me a sign! Show me your face!”
blessing? Go figure. How, we might ask, is that possible? Perhaps in the sense that Henri Nouwen describes, “To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives—the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections—that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment.”
suffering exacts–the terrible anguish, the intense physical or emotional pain, the feelings of rejection or loss or bewilderment or failure that sometimes accompany our human condition. But when we live from a grateful heart, we acknowledge that, in spite of appearances in those moments, God is present to us, God accompanies us, God continues to pour out unconditional love for us, and that is cause for profound gratitude. In our darkest hour, notes R. Wayne Willis, we can still use our pain and our loss to bless someone else whose wounds are fresher than ours.
past, even over actions taken in good faith and after careful discernment. This is true especially when the words spoken or the choices made did not result in a positive outcome. There are often expressions of “I should have…” or “If I knew then what I know now.” There is sometimes self-loathing or guilt or hidden shame. So how, then, are we to be when, like Vaughn Allex, our best efforts seem linked to a negative result?
So what might we learn about falling well that we can transfer and apply to the life of the spirit? Perhaps, flawed and limited as we are, it’s accepting the inevitability of falling and losing our balance. And then, with God’s grace, getting up and working and praying our way back to a place of being centered.
year-old husband and father of two small children, was diagnosed with ALS and given, at best, a few years to live. He chose to learn to live richly in the face of loss, the work that he called “learning to fall.” He wrote of falling as a figure of speech: we fall on our faces, we fall for a joke, we fall for someone, we fall in love. We fall away from ego and our carefully constructed identities, our reputations, our ambition. And we fall into compassion, into oneness with forces larger than ourselves, into oneness with others who are likewise falling. “We fall, at last, into the presence of the sacred,” he wrote, “into godliness, into mystery, into our better, diviner natures.”
we reach adulthood, we will be 70% water. And if we live to old age, we will still be at least 50% water. He concluded that throughout our lives, we exist mostly as water. Naturally curious, he began to conduct a series of scientific experiments with water.
words on both water and human consciousness. Water, he believes, teaches us in a very clear way how we must live our lives. It helps us to see ourselves and our universe differently. “The vibration of good words has a positive effect on our world,” Dr. Emoto noted, “whereas the vibration from negative words has the power to destroy.” One has only to enter a room full of strangers in conversation to notice that some people are vibrating in ways that feel joyful or content, whereas others may move through the room carrying and vibrating messages of sadness or anger.
the “Pesame,” the one who stands as a witness to injustice. “Pesame” is used when there is pain that cannot be assuaged. Pesame, I’m sorry for your pain. It’s grieving with the other. It’s standing with the other. It’s used to describe Mary, the widow, the mother of the condemned, the brokenhearted one at the foot of the cross, the one who stands and watches and never ever abandons.
And like Mary, we also say yes. We say yes to remaining, to staying on while others abandon and give up. We say yes to being transformed by the learnings that come to us through the collective ache of our world. We say yes to remaining in the messy, confusing, painful places where something new is struggling to bubble up and break through. We say yes to sharing the fate of God for the life of the world. We say yes to embracing with acceptance the powerlessness we feel in the face of pain, violence, or loss, and meeting it with inner hospitality. We say yes to carrying and loving what God carries and loves.
An examen-type reflection can take place at any time. You might pause midday to discern how the day is unfolding. You might enter into it in the evening, taking a sacred break as night approaches. It’s an invitation to become aware of how God has been present. To savor one or more moments of the day, and give thanks. To notice when you loved and when you were loved. To express sorrow to God for anything you regret and to ask for forgiveness. To look forward to a new day and to ask for God’s grace as you begin anew.