To Name is to Pray

Women have been naming and renaming ourselves before any of us had words to speak.

Dearly Beloveds, 

During my final year of divinity school I wrote a senior thesis/project on a progressive framework for marriage entitled “To Name is to Pray.” Naming, I argued, is a prayer because when we name something or someone we’re saying with as much hope as we can muster what we long for, what we desire. And isn’t that what prayer is? Saying, sometimes weeping, out loud, despite all odds, the deepest desires of our hearts? 

To name (and to pray) is to define our terms and set our boundaries; it is saying this is who I am and who I long to be, this is what I want and this is what I need. In this way, naming (and praying) can be one of the most vulnerable, courageous acts we engage in a lifetime. Therefore, those of us who get to name - anything or anyone - must treat the power of naming with the reverence and care it deserves (something that, historically speaking, has not been the case with the naming of land and people…something I’ll write more about next week).

As a third-year, newly married divinity school student, I was eager to name a constructive understanding of marriage that wasn’t the conservative “wives submit to their husbands” trope I was handed as a young girl. While we progressives are really good at saying what we don’t want and like, I was ready to say, name, and pray what it is we DO want, like, need, and long for in a marriage, in a life. 

So I wrote a senior thesis about marriage, and I wrote it like a prayer. Dear God, Help us move toward a framework of loving and partnering that reflects how we understand You–mutual, reciprocal, compassionate, inclusive, open. Looking back, I can now see that my senior project foreshadowed the next ten plus years of my writing life, a life full of naming and praying, praying and naming over and over again. 

It will come as no surprise, then, that naming and praying are essential parts of Blessed are the Women. Each chapter includes the name and the story of a woman from the Gospels, a corresponding liturgy (prayers) for personal and communal spiritual practice, and named woman-led organizations doing the work of justice and love today for which our ancestors paved the way. As I write weekly in this space, I’m sure I’ll share more and more of the origins of their stories and their names as an invitation for you to learn more about the women (which you can also do by pre ordering my book) and as an invitation for you to learn more about yourself, your own name, and the other places that need naming and reclaiming (and therefore praying) in your life. 

But for today, I want to share the origin story of the naming of Blessed are the Women: Naming and Reclaiming Women’s Stories from the Gospels. Her most recent name (before the one that now dons her cover and is written in ink) was “Women’s Gospel: The Good News According to Women,” and before that her name was “Herstory: The Gospel According to Women,” and before that her name was simply, “The Gospel According to Women.” I even, for a brief moment, thought her name might be “To Name is to Pray,” giving a nod to my past work in divinity school, but, heeding the wisdom of a dear friend, I decided that I wanted (and needed) women to be at the forefront of whatever name/title she ended up with. 

It was Memorial Day week, and I was lounging poolside in New Orleans, celebrating my husband’s 40th birthday with a much needed vacation, when I picked up my phone and saw an email from my publisher entitled, “Title.” After going through several rounds of edits on the book itself, it was now time to choose her name, and the email from my publisher contained several suggestions and reasons why the sales team liked certain ones and not others.  

While the suggested list was adequate, none of them were making my heart sing. On a whim, I wrote back, “What about Blessed are the Women? It comes from a song I wrote for each liturgy in each chapter of the book, inspired by Elizabeth’s song to Mary in the Gospel of Luke.” I hit send, set my phone down, and quickly fell into a sun-soaked sleep. 

When I stirred an hour later, I groggily reopened my email to see a note back from my publisher that read something like: We love Blessed are the Women AND, as our sales team noted, there aren’t any other books that show up in a search on Amazon with this title. Let’s do it. 

I smiled and shared the good news (and name) with my husband and continued to think about the fact that no books (to our Amazon search’s knowledge) have been named “Blessed are the Women.” Even Jesus, in the infamous Sermon on the Mount does not explicitly name women in the litany of the blessed. 

But Elizabeth does. In Luke 1:45 she sings, “Blessed is she who believes,” and while she’s referring to Mary in her song, I like to believe that she refers to all of us women who believe in ourselves, in one another, and in the God who births the good news with us when she sings this sacred melody. I like to believe that she sings at the top of her lungs on behalf of all of us who hear and hold one another’s stories, and say, “I believe you.” 

If you read music, you’ll be able to pick out the tune of “Blessed is She” from the music shared above. It’s a tune I’ve been singing with my children since they were born, using different words, of course, but words no less reflective of the love and belief I have in any of us who hear and hold, believe and bless. Channeling my inner Elizabeth, following in the steps of my grandmothers and their grandmothers before them, I sing, and I pray, and I name - and I invite my children (and all of us) to do the same.

Women have been singing the world into being forever. Women have been blessing one another since before time was created. Women have been naming and renaming ourselves before any of us had words to speak.  

A breath. A song. A movement. A break. A freckle. A grin. A grimace. A bow. A cry. A release. A moan. A groan. A cackle. A snore. A reach. A flex. A contraction. An expansion. 

We are the very prayers we pray, the very prayers we live. 

We are the peacemakers. We are the mourners. We are the ones hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Ours is the kin-dom of heaven that we are creating right here on earth. 

Blessed are the Women bears a name that her ancestor, Elizabeth, would be proud of. Most importantly, she bears a name that is an ancient prayer, a prayer we pray every time a woman’s story is named, shared, believed - and therefore blessed. 

May it ever be so. 

See you back here next week, beloveds, when I’ll stick with this idea of naming (I think - I always try to leave room for the Spirit) and ponder, “What would our names be as women if we’d always held the power to name ourselves?”

-Claire

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