By Cathy Hird
In a well-known passage in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare claimed that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. The play goes on to prove that it is hard to get around the power of a name.
"Milkweed" is a name that warns about the sticky sap in the plant's stem, and the way the plant takes over a pasture. The name does not tell us how important it is to the Monarch butterfly life cycle, how soft the fluff is that carries the seed or how beautiful the seed pod is when it is dry.
Names help us see some things, and they hide others. Ugly names make it hard to see beauty. Harsh names make it hard to see goodness. Names that point out the challenges, the darkness, the destructive nature of a thing, a person or a place make it hard to see light and possibility.
The Hebrew prophet Isaiah knew this. When writing to his people in exile, he acknowledges that they have been named as defeated and lost. He writes that as a people they have been called "Forsaken" and that their land has been called "Desolate." (Isaiah 62: 4) These names describe how they feel and what they lived through.
The names fit in a logical way. Before they were carried out of Jerusalem, the people saw the city walls breached and the temple torn down. They saw orchards and vineyards uprooted, and homes burned. They know that back in Judah, the land is desolate.
They worry that God has forsaken them. They were dragged from the land God gave. Now in a foreign land, they are servants without a permanent home. They are trapped in a culture that does not nurture their spirits. They feel alone and lost, forsaken.
These names speak of darkness and loss and allow despair to seep into their spirits. These empty descriptions cloud their minds and hearts so that they cannot see the light. Without light, they cannot hope.
The people need a new name, and Isaiah says that this is God's gift to them. They will be called "My delight is in her" and "Married." The names point to the promise that the land will no longer be desolate but fruitful and beautiful. They will not be left in Babylon but will be allowed to return to Judah to start again.
The new names help them to see a new reality. The new names show them the light that is around them, and they begin to hope for renewal, for freedom, for a return home.
For an individual who lives with suffering and horrific circumstances, despair can seep into their soul. If trauma and agony are what a person sees, they may assign dark and dangerous names to the world. To recover hope, they need to see and to name good around them.
The same thing happens to places where there is endemic violence. These days, the world thinks of Syria as "impossible" and the conflict as "unresolvable." The world looks at the two sides in the civil war and says that neither is "worth supporting." Both are "barbaric."
These labels have helped the west to open up to refugees, to help people escape from the "impossible violence." The danger is that the world may give up on Syria. If despair seeps into the world's opinion, the land and the people who are left may be abandoned.
Syria needs a new name. The rebels and the government need new names, something that will lead them to be the best humanity that their culture honours, something that will help the rest of the world find a way to influence the situation toward peace.
In his non-violent campaign to free India from British rule, M. K. Gandhi taught that transformation comes when we treat others in a way that calls them to be the best human that they can be, the best of what their culture honours. In the west, we have treated some as "friend" and others as "enemy." Which is which has shifted around quite fluidly.
As long as we label Syria as lost, we will be tempted to give up. As long as we label the whole of ISIS as "barbaric terrorists" we will not find the rational leaders. It is time to ease up on the rhetoric so that we can see the children in need, the possibilities for rebuilding, the hope for peace
Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.
