What's In A Name?

I recently in these pages referred to the Rock of Gibraltar.  That ‘term’ was synonymous with the era of prudent investment.  (And thus also the name, and company, of Prudential.)  And then the era of Masters of the Universe took over, with all of their hotshot money-making schemes, Credit Default Swaps and Collateralized Debt Obligations and so forth -  ‘derivatives’.(1)  Masters of the Universe.  Whose sole purpose was to ‘make money,’ and as much of it as possible.  Hang any caution; full speed ahead.  And if your indiscriminate behavior causes a Big Bust, well, that’s what you ‘hedge your bets’ with, have politicians in your pocket for: to bail you out (with the taxpayer’s money) if and when the going goes south.  Sweet.

Not.

But I digress - a bit - from my main point for this blog.  I wanted to look at this business of names.  It’s actually interesting, how we humans have come up with family names.  Smith, for a particularly common example.  It is from families whose male heads made a living by being a smith.  And take Carpenter.  And Baker.  And Bishop.  

And take my family name, of Stanfield.   My paternal grandmother - who, as a Mormon, was big into genealogy(2) - told me one summer which my brother and I were spending with them, as was our custom for some years when younger, that our family name came from European stock where the prime progenitor was known for having placed a stone or stones in his field as a marker of his property.  Hence, ‘stone in the field,’ or stanfield, as the family name became over time.  And also, via usage, my father took on a nickname of ‘Stan’ as against his given first name of Orville.  Probably feeling towards it fairly much as how I felt when entering the Army for my two years of service under the Draft (as a c.o., or conscientious objector; another story.  Or at least, another part of this story), and felt my given name of Duane being a bit twee in the circumstances, and thus took on the same nickname, of Stan, which has ‘followed’ me in life ever since.(3)  

But I have recently given all this some thought; under the general topic heading of ‘there are no coincidences’.  I am looking at my surname - my ‘family’ name - as an example.  Stanfield.  A stone in the field.  A solid rock in the Field of life.  Dedicated to the Source behind it all - all, of the visible spectrum manifestations of what is at its very rock-solid core, energy.  Pure energy.

With our ‘true’ bodies being bodies of Light.  

Which we are on our Journey of reclaiming.  After spending some time wandering in the Field of experience.  

And picking up wisdom along

The Way.

Now, do I know fully ‘what it’s all about’?  

No.  But I’m going to find out.  Because this ‘stone’ has legs.  So to speak.

Join me.  And be, as well, as sturdy as a stone in

The Field.                     

—

footnotes:

(1) ’Debt (or at least ‘financial’) instruments’ they are called.  As if giving them a fancy innocuous name would make them smell any sweeter than the awful offal that they are, or at least, have become, in the hands of addicts. 

(2) For those who don’t understand the reference: ‘Mormons’ - more properly, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; aka LDS - are big on the idea of baptizing their family forebears, who came before the establishment of The Church, into The Church, for them, by proxy. 

   That is to presume that we humans only have one bite at the apple, as it were, doesn’t allow for the concept of reincarnation.  Which concept is gaining more and more of an evidentiary status as we go, via recollections - mostly by children, before their current life status takes over their vehicle’s memory synapses, filling them with so much input that they lose ‘sight’ of earlier memories.  But to continue.

(3) Unlike my brother - three years older than I - who fairly early on engaged in the same sort of creative cover of his own given name, of DeVon.  I remember the day when we were playing in the back yard of our home in Southern California when Mom came out and asked, “Who’s ‘Bob’?"  A letter had come - from the Charles Atlas people, famous at the time for body-building ads in the comic books - for a ‘Bob’ Stanfield.  My brother sheepishly owned up to the deed.  But hey - they’re all just ‘names’.  Tags.  To help us navigate our ways through this life experience.  Although they can have a deeper significance.

   Read on…