What’s in a nickname?
It happens somewhere between
that ninth and tenth month;
hardly takes a year
if its gonna happen at all.
A rite of belonging past the
informalities of friendship
into the kind of intimacy between
a kid and the walking stick he’s whittling on;
still plenty of coarseness to go around,
but there’s that smooth place, the handle,
exposed like velveteen,
stripped back to the place where the stick
first became wood.
That’s when it happens.
You get named beyond bloodline
deeper than water baptism
into the rarified realm of being owned yet not possessed
named in a way initiating you
into a lineage of Spirit
where deep touches deep
in the shallows of a word.
I think that’s what Sam
was getting at when he asked me,
“Is Jesus God’s nickname?”
jd walt. christmas 2011
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