Hallowed Name

HALLOWED NAME


Translating is the ask
for that which is held in another
speech, something not yet said,

or understood which needs to be
the yet to-be said which hangs like
a wound waiting for the healing word

a meaning yet which might often be
refreshed as a new tongue discovers
the most hallowed sense, like that elusive

for the very same word in the Lord's Prayer
which had stuttered missionary Len Harris into silent
pause, after war time, on Groote Eylandt

till his Nunggubuyu language aid,
Grace Yimambu, who'd just given birth
to a baby boy, brought him to the mission

to be baptised, and she asked Len Harris
to annoint her child with the name
Winston. Surprised, he asked her why.

'Because you told about in the war'
Grace said, "What Winston Churchill
said, that made people strong. So,

I want to name my baby after
an important man." When Harris asked
'If you wanted someone important.'

'Why didn't you call him Jesus?'
Grace was astonished. So much she declared:
"That name belong Jesus all by himself."

"Ah," said Harris, in glowing relief
"Now how do you say 'that'
in Nunggubuyu?"


* * *

- based on as an anecdote by Len Harris and shared and recorded in May 1978 by his son to John Harris who relates it in his great history: "One Blood: 200 years of Aboriginal Encounters with Christianity, A Story of Hope' (1990) Albatross Books -[pp.816 - a book I bought in Alice Springs in July 1995 and which I begun to read on our travels and which I am still re-reading.