My Little River Jared

For lots of people in lots of places, giving a baby a good name is as essential as getting good prenatal care. And so, my "bone memory" told me that I had to pick a powerful name for my son.

I selected his middle name first, and there's no mystery about what it means. "I am with you." With all the challenges necessary to face down, I-- no-- we all needed constant reminders of the promise that the Divine has whispered from the dawn of time to now. "I am with you."

Eventually, the name Jared came to me. I kept it close to the vest, not entirely certain that it would make the final cut. I checked, double-checked and cross checked it in all of the baby name books which repeatedly told that in Hebrew it means "to descend" and "king." I took that "descend" part to mean "to be born of," period. The books were leaving me hanging and what they offered seemed to have implied ellipses trailing behind. To descend...To descend from what? Or who? A little more back story, please, folks!

At one point, I came across a very informative book that added a layer telling that in Greek Jared/Yared means "rose." It brought to mind that Rumi poem that says something like "that which God said to the rose he said to my heart." Not too many boys wanna know that their mamas named them after flowers, but I reasoned that Jared would be my rugged rose. Mighty like a Rose, that old plantation lullaby-- 'cept with an Oscar Brown, Jr./Nina Simone "Brown Baby" kind of feeling. I rolled with it.

Near the time of baby's due date, his daddy's daddy-- a Christian evangelical pastor with Asante roots-- wanted to know my reasons for selecting Jared as the first name (actually, a lot of people wanted to know exactly why.) Grandpa Kwabena then set about combing the Old Testament looking for passages that told a little bit more about the mysterious original bearer of this name. What's this Jared's claim to fame? Was he wise like Solomon? A worker of wonders like Moses? What he found was one simple line mentioning Jared: he was the father of Enoch and Methuselah. That was about that.

We live in Atlanta. Now, anybody who lives here or somewhere like D.C., New York or Philly knows well the Five Percent types who take pride in peering into the deeper, obscure meaning of things. (Not saying this to 'dis, or in a disparaging way. Okay, I am poking a teeny bit of fun. But mostly wanting simply to draw a clear picture for those who know.) So there was this one Five Percent, break-it-down-to-its-very-last-compound kind of brother originally from New York and who works at one of the health food stores near our house. When Jared was about year old, the brother shared that my baby's name meant "The Last." Now, when Brother Man said this, the look on his face and the kind of hesitant way in which he offered his reading sounded a tad ominous. (If it was an old-time soap opera or bad movie we would have heard the grinding of a dramatic organ in the back-- da, da, DAAAAAHH) Who's to say that Jared is going to be my "wash belly? So, I shrugged the comment off and kept a-stepping, knowing that I'd cloaked my child with a talawah name.

Now, here I am-- not quite two years after selecting the name Jared. Being the forever-curious mama that I am I just happened to poke around a little and find confirmation of what Spirit whispered to me early on. Do allow me to share:

Jared in Hebrew is Yarod. Yarod relates to the Hebrew verb "Yarden," which does indeed mean "to descend" as all the baby books noted. However, this descend doesn't simply mean to be born from. In the much more poetic sense of the word, it means "to flow." To flow like a river, as in "Roll, Jordan, Roll." Like blessings or a cup running over.

Yar-Dan is the name of the Jordan River in Hebrew. Also, Yardenit means a baptismal place. Yar-Dan. Yardan. Yarden. Jordan. Think of the expression, "Where there is water there is life." A river being a place of cleansing, renewal and a source of nourishment. Rivers are also avenues of transport with important civilizations having flourished along river banks. And, incidentally, in Arabic the name Yardan also means "king."

Am I sounding a bit Five Percent? It's all good, because now this story is full. And as Bob says, it satisfies my soul.

Sacred Water

Image from Shinto and Jinja website

[One of pure-heart] will be like a tree planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers. ~Psalm 1:3


As the saying goes, "Where there is water, there is life. " Certainly, our physical life begins with us floating in the waters of the wombs of our mothers before our feet ever touch Earth's dry land. As I think about the struggle that we all must endure to remain in balance another proverb-- African in origin, I think-- comes to mind: "Where there is mud, there's water." I take this to mean that even in the messiest of situations there is the opportunity to grow. Before this can happen, though, we must point our divining rod into the direction of the Source. Set out on a sojourn to get to the hammam, or better yet, the Great Stream. The place where the soul thirsty for purification and rebirth can go to be cleansed. This is one of the reasons that the idea of river baptisms, especially ones of the old south, are beautiful to me. (It made me happy to learn that one of my relatives, Aunt Ora Lee, proudly recalled being baptised in the Guadalupe River near Victoria, Texas.)

In any case, listening to the radio yesterday, I heard a Jewish-Canadian neuroscientist and author named Esther Sternberg speaking about her book The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions. The main idea that she brought forward was that at some point there was a break between the once-unified domains of science and spirituality and that the people of today are slowly accepting that the split can (and must) be mended. Her outlook could not be compactly fit into the New Age category; instead her philosophy sounded as if it were inclined toward osteopathy.

Another of the profound, yet simple things she said was that in ancient times, healing temples or sanctuaries were usually built beside fresh water sources with sloping banks. The slope made it so that people who were too ill to immerse themselves could be eased in with the help of others. A beautiful vision. During her interview Dr. Sternberg spoke often of Asklepios, the Greek god of healing (known in Egypt as Imhotep, to whom temples were dedicated in Memphis, on the west bank of the Nile River.) During the writing of her book and the healing of her body from painful arthritis, Dr. Sternberg said that she visited Greece. One of the things she did while there was visit one of Asklepios' shrines.

She did not imply that the water in and of itself had any magical properties. Simply, the idea was that something unexplainable happened-- an awareness sparked or epiphany occurred. A Jungian kind of thing, I suppose. As a result, she was able to access a power that helped move her toward healing. (Another resonant point that she mentioned was that there is a center of the brain reserved for the meditative, read: hypnotic or trance, state. This made me think of Eknath Eswaran continually pointing out the importance of the personal mantra)

As I type, another image comes to mind is that of the master teacher Yeshua/Issa/Jesus taking a moment during his secret Passover feast to bathe the feet of his disciples. Most of the time we think of this gesture as being a lesson in selfless service, humility. Could He also have been saying, "There's more where this came from." In the same way that he was but a small sample (the Son) drawn from the vast Source (the great Mother-Father), the small bowl of water that He used to perform His act of outward purification was a sample of the guaranteed mind-body-spirit healing available to the disciples if they continued to walk along what Buddhists refer to as the Enlightened Path or The Way?