Named, Not Marked

Good naming is not only affirming--sometimes it hurts.

The shared naming I think is trickier. What defines a group is what is in common. Here's where I'm uncomfortable....

We need some naming within communities--in the quotation above it freed Caspian to reign and yet to regard his rule with caution. It empowered Old Testament patriarchs to go on difficult journeys and to make a people. There is a naming that induces creativity, that blesses, and there is a naming that controls, that produces what is called an "ascriptive culture" in my studies, that defines "us" and "them" very narrowly.

[via A Thin Silence]