Why know the name? Isn't it enough to just watch them? It is, I think, a primal need to name things.
Right there in the beginning of the Bible, Adam is told to go and name all the animals. I wonder what he called them then? How many words did he have, anyway? And what did the words mean? This is a brand new person, this Adam. How much talking has he actually done? This seems like a really big task for anyone, but especially a brand new someone. And how many animals were there?
Why didn't God just tell Adam what their names were? Like a sort of garden/jungle tour. God driving the jeep with a little speaker thing, "and on your left are the zebras, to your right the lions"... No, God told Adam this was Adam's job.
Adam must have needed that job in order for him to learn to differentiate for himself. And in that case, perhaps we all repeat this naming process in each of our lives. My precious grandson, Dylan, is the most recent in our family to begin this job all over again. Each word is learned in conjunction with an image which he is cataloging in his brain storehouse.
Nouns come first. Name the animals. Name the people. (Adam only had one other person so that wasn't a really big job and I think maybe God named her.) Name the food. Name the surroundings, inside and out. Mama, Dada, doggy, chair, table, tree, rain.
It is the beginning of clarifying his environment, then having some control over it. Mama says, "Are you hungry?" Yes." "Would you like a sandwich?" "No, pasta."
After a stroke, many people acquire aphasia, an inability to process language. It is said not to be indicative of intelligence but is a result of damage to the part of the brain that contains and interprets the sounds that we know as words.
One difference between Dylan and a person with aphasia, is that he is just beginning to fill up his "word bank". It is fairly empty, but not broken. A person with aphasia has injury to that part of the brain and may or may not, regain some functioning.
Today, the word "mountain" today has a specific meaning for me. I mean my mountain, or the small range of mountains, that I see out the window of this room. I now know that they are the Ortiz mountains. The highway NM14 runs through those mountains, going through the town of Madrid on the way down to I-40 which runs west into Albuquerque. There was a lot of turquoise, silver and even gold mined out of those mountains. I am learning more words about this mountain. Before we leave this beautiful paradise, I may know a lot more words about this mountain, this juniper country, these birds and this sky.
Will these words get in the way or help the full experience of this land and its inhabitants? Two nights ago we were awakened by the sound of a very enthusiastic bunch of coyotes, howling and barking and yipping like mad. We said, "Coyotes."
First there is perceiving. Then interpretation. My prayer is not to put those in the wrong order so that the perception has to fit the name. Let the name fit the perception. Let me see what is there, hear what is there. Let the stillness give the name.
