[I am writing this on March 2, 20 weeks pregnant and 20 weeks before our child is due to make his or her appearance, and before we have even had the sex confirmed. But I am pretty sure that this baby is a she, and that this will be the story of her name.]
This morning I came home from the
Pick-N-Pay in Mbabane, Swaziland, with a package of cinnamon sticks. The label
said CASSIA BARK. Joel saw it on the kitchen counter and a little later walked
out of the kitchen with it in his hands, saying, “What about Cassia for a
name?”
My immediate answer was, “No.” Joel said, “Okay,” and walked
back into the kitchen. It’s not that I didn’t like the sound of Cassia, but I am big on name meanings, and the thought of naming my daughter after cinnamon did
not appeal, nor did the thought of someday telling her we got her name off a
food label. [Note: I later learned that cassia and cinnamon bark are not actually the same thing, but they look and taste very similar, and cassia was what I found when I went looking for cinnamon back on that day in March.]
But I was intrigued, and so I Googled it. To my surprise
Cassia was an actual name, and there were two saints with the name, one a 3rd
century Catholic saint about whom very little is known, and another a 9th
century Byzantine (Orthodox) saint, whose name is usually spelled Kassia. Cassia is the
Latin form and Kassia is the Greek form of the older Hebrew name Kezia, which
appears in the Bible as she is the second of Job’s daughters (the ones that
were born after all his trials). I think that Joel told me about the Hebrew
name and Job’s daughter even before I started Googling, and also that the
Hebrew word meant “fragrance,” because he tends to know things like that. I really liked this as a meaning, as it evokes
for me the call of Christ’s followers (II Cor 2) to be a fragrant aroma to God
and to the world (a very meaningful metaphor for me, but that story involves
Afghanistan and goat cheese and the Lausanne world mission conference in Cape Town in 2010 and is too much of a digression for this post).
All that is really known about Saint Cassia of the 3rd
century is that she was martyred, and her feast day in July 20, which stopped
me cold as that is my due date. A sign? Then I started to read about Saint Kassia
of the 9th century, who was a scholar, poet, musician, composer,
abbess (the founder of a convent), and a woman of extraordinary gifts,
particularly for her century. I think it was all over for me when I read the
words of her most famous surviving hymn, which is sung during Holy Week and is
about the woman who annointed Jesus’ feet with perfume and with her tears
before his death (one of my favorite Jesus stories and one that I cannot read
without tears). According to Wikipedia, in Greece, the service at which this
hymn is sung is popular with prostitutes, who must feel this is a story and a
Jesus to which they can relate. You can Google “Hymn of Kassiani” to get the
words, which are beautiful.
So that is how our daughter came to be named Cassia, after a
woman of intelligence and beauty, courage and conviction, music and poetry. You can find more stories online if you want, about her history-making participation
in the beauty pageant of her day, and the persecution including lashings with
whips during which she said, "I hate silence, when it is time to
speak."
May is a tribute to my grandmother Berthamay (Bertie) Stanley
Roberts, one of the most extraordinary and wonderful people I have ever known,
and someone I still miss terribly. She lived long enough to see
me get married (on her 84th birthday), but unfortunately not long
enough to meet either of my children, and I want them to know all about her as they grow up. I
have been trying to figure out for years how to name a child after my beloved
grandma, without naming my daughter Bertha, and this seemed like my chance. And
if my daughter ever asks me why she has plain old May for a middle name, I will
tell her about the tall, classy woman who loved to talk, to laugh her loud,
exuberant laugh, to hold people tight to her in rib-crushing hugs, to sing old
hymns (what a singer she was), and to watch basketball games and exclaim when
her team missed a shot, “Oh, bless their hearts!”
She loved beautiful things and times of celebration, and was a dazzling
hostess, always gracious and with an immaculately set table. She drew people to
her in droves with her gift for making each person feel that they mattered to her and to God. Her final
years, of pain and cancer and endless surgeries, did not steal her love of
life, of time spent with the people she loved, and of colorful clothes and bright,
sparkly jewelry. She died well, with joy and faith, as she had lived
well. I know she prayed for me every day of my life. I have a profound
spiritual heritage from her, and that’s the heritage I hope to pass on to my children
and my children’s children.
I hope that by the time I’ve told her all this, my daughter will know that it is
an honor to be named after her Great Grandma Bertie.
