NAMES (Do They Mean Anything?)
by Madeline l'Engle
​
The first thing I tried to do was to learn their names. To be known by name is terribly important, though I tend, as usual, to
carry my feeling for the name to disproportionate lengths. There is nothing more frightening, for instance, than being a patient in a hospital where you are a number and a case first, and a person second, if at all.
And then there’s Emily Bronte ...
One day, a summer ago, I paid our grocery bill for the month. Our new checkbook was with my husband in the city, but I had
a rather elderly checkbook which did not have the mandatory cybernetic salad in the bottom left-hand comer. However, I had
the money in the bank, and I had my right and proper signature on the check. I was brought up to believe that, if I need to, I
can use a piece of birch bark, write in the name of the bank, the person to whom the money is to go, the sum, the signature, and this constitutes a valid check
But my check bounced. When it was explained to me that this was because it was missing some magnetic gibberish, I was
furious! I was furious at the dinner table, furious so loudly that my husband was forced to bang on the table and shout at me to
shut up.
I shut up. But I didn’t forget it. Everything I feel about names, about ontology, really, had been violated. Then, at Christmastime, a friend bought something for me, and I reached for a check to repay him the ten dollars and fifty cents. Because I have both French Huguenot and Scots blood I am stubborn and frugal: I saw no reason why my old checks weren’t still valid, and I wasn’t about to waste them.
My friend said, “Oh, come off it, Madeleine, you know that check won’t go through.” His job is to handle vast sums of money daily; he knows what he’s talking about. I asked, “Do you really and truly mean that my signature, my name, means nothing, absolutely nothing at all?”
“That’s what I mean.”
It was a wet and windy day. I looked at die rain slashing against the windows, pulled out a check with cybernetic salad in the bottom left-hand comer, said, “All right, then, I feel like Emjly Bronte today,” and signed it Emily Bronte. My friend was not amused. “Madeleine, what are you doing?” “You just told me that my name means nothing, absolutely nothing at all. Qkay, I feel like Emily Bronte and I don’t see why I shouldn't sign it Emily Bronte. Take it—just for fun— and let’s see what happens.”
"I know perfectly well what’s going to happen. I won’t get my money.”
But after lunch he came in, looking rather sheepish. He had his ten dollars and fifty cents, and no questions asked at the
bank about the signature. “But it won’t go through with your monthly statement. It’ll bounce.”
“All right If it bounces I’ll write you another check.” It did not bounce. I now have cancelled checks signed Emily Bronte, Jane Austen, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In the battle between Madeleine and the machine, at this point the machine is winning.
​
This is an excerpt from Madeline l'Engle's book "A Circle of Quiet"
​​
​​
NEAR
​​
Our son Scott, at age 9 months, was given a spoonful of ice-cream. He'd walk away eating it, then turn and come back with his mouth open. Another bite, walk away, come back mouth open. He never went far away as long as there was ice-cream there.
He knew what was good, and stayed close to it.
-Pastor Jeff Hatch, Westminster Presbyterian Church, West Chester, PA, 1987
​
​
NIGHTLY NEWS, SYMBOLS, and RITUAL
TELEVISED NEWS CALLED A RITUAL
By EILEEN C. SPRAKER, Staff reporter
​
When the president strolls down the red carpet and takes his place behind the lectern with its presidential seal, it’s almost like a religious service.
The presidential press conference is a rite, says a professor who has studied rituals that glue together our common life.
Nightly news programs also have a lot of ritual in them, says Gregor Goethals, who teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.
​
“In this technological, secular society we find in television our deepest rituals, rituals that tell us who we are, where we came from and where we’re going,” he says. He cites nightly news programs and presidential press conferences as examples of TV staples that use evangelical, ritualistic traditions. Goethels is author of “The TV Ritual: Worship at the Video Altar," a study of ritualism in television and its relationship to religious rites in America.
​
Presidential press conferences take place in a very special place and time," Goethals said.
​
“There’s a very particular setting: the White House. There is also a rhythm and flow to this ritualized event. It usually opens with a homily," and then the homily, like a talk-back sermon, "is followed by a question-and-answer period.
​
“But I think it performs a much more ritualistic function, which is to confirm our sense of trust and worth.”
​
Goethals notes the President walks down a long, red-carpeted hallway to stand before a podium flanked with flags — a setting reminiscent of a church pulpit “All of these things cannot simply be by accident. Particularly in commercials and news, you just do not see things by accident. And even though images fly by in a split second, every inch of your television is an important source of symbolic information.”
​
The nightly news, like the presidential press conference, has an implicit function of invoking trust and loyalty, Goethals said.
​
“The public, just by the nature of news, is presented with a series of symbolic reports. We respond not to the concrete event but to those reported symbolic events.”
Evangelical reliance is on a charismatic individual — on the news, it’s the anchor man. “The reason the networks spend
millions for these very important persons is because they need to embody a sense of confidence and trust,” Goethals said.
“We have so many of those symbolic reports to deal with, that we tend to depend on this authority figure to tell us what is important.”
Goethals’ ideas on television and public piety were published recently in Media and Values, an interfaith media magazine pub-
lished by the Media Action Research Center in cooperation with 15 Catholic, Protestant and Jewish groups in the Los Angeles area.
​
The News Journal, Wilmington, Del., Saturday, May 4, 1985
​
NOTICE​
​
​Shug Avery, in The Color Purple, offers this bit of holy mischief: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” It’s a startling image of divine disappointment, but it has always struck a chord with me. I imagine God, the artist of stars and oceans and wildflowers, yearning for someone – anyone – to stop and take notice.
Jesus’ words in Matthew carry that same ache. Keep awake, he says. Pay attention. Don’t miss what matters. Advent begins not with sentiment but with summons: a call to wake up, to notice the beauty, the ache, the holy presence woven into our days.
Scripture is full of moments when God’s people lost focus, when we drifted into distraction or despair. But even then, God did not turn away. Even then, the Artist kept painting. Kept reaching. Kept hoping we’d lift our eyes.
​
By Terry McDowell Ott in the Presbyterian Outlook Devotional Booklet "Draw Near," Advent 2025