The Word He Used to Use

For forty one years Beto's father called him one word and now he calls him Alberto.

The word was nothing special. It was a shortening, the kind of thing that happens in a family and then never stops happening. It got used in every register: across a yard, at a table, in a hospital corridor, once at a funeral in a voice that was not steady.

His father has not raised his voice to him in three years. That is worth saying up front, because people assume estrangement and there is none. They speak most weeks. He came to the house last month and fixed a shelf. He is not cold.

He is careful. And careful sounds like Alberto.

The first time it happened, Beto assumed it was for the benefit of the person standing next to them. The second time there was nobody there.

He has never asked. And the reason he has never asked is not pride; it is that he is fairly sure of the answer, and the answer is not cruelty. His father is a man who says what he means with words and he has stopped feeling entitled to a word of affection he has not earned back the right to use. That is his father all over. It is, in a sad way, an act of respect.

And this is what nobody sees from outside, because from outside there is nothing to see.

A shortened name is not a nickname. It is a record of a relationship. It says: I have known you since before you had a full name, and I do not need the whole of it. And when it goes, what has actually gone is not affection. It is standing. The whole arrangement is still there, and Beto is now in it as a guest with a long name.

And this is where I stop writing about Beto, because something you used to be called stopped being used.

I am not going to ask what the word was, and I am not going to promise you that anybody starts using it again.

What the father calls him

I want to take you to a sentence a father says at exactly the moment when a formal word would have been completely justified.

For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.Luke 15:24

This my son.

Look at when he says it. Not before. Not while it was going well. He says it to the servants, out loud, in the hearing of the household, on the day the boy came back from a situation the entire estate knew about.

Nothing in that moment required the word son. There were a dozen accurate alternatives available and every one of them would have been defensible.

And the father does something even more pointed than choosing it. He makes it the announcement. He does not say it privately and hand over a robe quietly. He says this my son in the plural hearing of the people who will be serving at the table.

So take that where the word stopped being used at your own table. You are called son and not by a longer name, and Luke 15:24 has the father saying it publicly on the very day it was hardest, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that word arrive in a man who has been getting his full name for three years.

Now the honest half, and it is the reason to trust the rest.

Nothing in that parable is a promise about your father. He may go on saying Alberto for the rest of his life. That would be a real loss and it is allowed to be one, and it may also be the only way he currently knows how to be careful with you, which is not the same as rejection.

What the written word does say is that there is a father who has not put the short word away, and the Spirit of God is the one who carries it across a table where nobody has used it in three years.