Names and Labels

Welcome! I’m going to start by talking about Names and Labels and explaining the Name I have given to this blog.

Names and Labels can be so constraining and revealing at the same time. They put us in boxes of assumptions that go along with those names and labels. They can lead us astray by setting up expectations that any of us can be fully defined by our labels and names. At the same time, they can offer a glimpse into our identities that, as long as they are understood to be simply a beginning, can offer some insights into how we see ourselves.

As author Bill Bryson wrote in The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way, “…there must be some conventions of usage. We must agree to spell cat c-a-t and not e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t and we must agree that by that word we mean a small furry quadruped that goes meow and sits comfortably on one’s lap and not a large lumbering beast that grows tusks and is exceedingly difficult to housebreak.” So, yes, Names and Labels have meanings. But, if you assume that cat completely defines every single cat, you will be greatly disappointed if you got a Siamese cat expecting it to behave the same as an Orange Tabby.

So, I’ll start with some of my Names. My legal name is Todd Strickland. But I have other names that are applied to me. I’m known as Daddy, Brother, Sweetie (as a Husband), Reverend, Pastor, and Chaplain. All of those names suit me but, like the Siamese and the Tabby, they don’t fully define me.

Some of the Labels that are attached to me suit me, likewise, but don’t fully define me. I am a cisgender male. (If this term cisgender is new to you it essentially means that my gender matches the label that was put on my birth certificate when I was born.) I am a heterosexual married man. I am a father, a brother, an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, an educator, a psychotherapist, an addictions counselor, a baseball fan (or, as my mother used to put it, a fan of anything that involves a ball), a singer (formerly a tenor, now a baritone), a dancer (not professionally trained but I love to dance), a bicyclist and triathlete, and a writer. But all those labels aren’t exhaustive and only begin to define me. Despite all those professional labels I used, I am currently employed as none of them. Instead, I’m not just a father, I am a stay-at-home father. On the one hand, I am a triathlete who is content to finish a triathlon and doesn’t expect to win them. On the other hand, I am a singer who has had the honor of singing at Carnegie Hall. I am a father who was raised by a gentle man and who aspires to raise my son and daughter likewise. All of these labels begin to describe me but are only that, a beginning.

The name I have given to this blog, BuddhistDruidChristianHumanist, comes out of my time as a chaplain. I walked into a room on the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit which was one of my regular rotations. I introduced myself as the chaplain for this unit and the man I introduced myself to replied, “My name is Tim. I’m a Buddhist Druid,” and then he laughed. He probably thought he was going to throw me off but instead it became the beginning of a great conversation that we had over the next couple months until he died suddenly.

Tim is the Buddhist Druid even though he wasn’t actually a Buddhist Druid. But the label suited his broad philosophy of life, his mindfulness, his reverence for nature, and his humor. The Christian Humanist is me. It only begins to define my theology and philosophy (which could probably include Buddhist and Druid in some ways) but it is a significant label. Humanism in modern parlance is often attached to the word “secular.” However, there is a rich history of religious humanism and Christian Humanism that has gotten lost in time. Christian Humanism is at the core of various movements in human history from the Renaissance to the American Revolution to the anti-slavery movement and beyond. It is an identity that takes seriously Jesus’ reply to the question of what is the greatest commandment when he said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22:37-40)

So, that’s me, in a label, a Buddhist Druid Christian Humanist. Both the beginning of me and a continuing journey.