On Being Pawlett Jackson



Hopefully the coming weeks and seasons will teach us many things about the labour of being married and its reward. Hopefully we will find time and space and words to share these things, so that any and all can be caught up in this happy thing we have found. This is a brief summary of some thoughts that have lead us to find it joyful to be Pawlett Jacksons.

1. Oneness. We are Pawlett Jackson so to stand for the way in which we intend our union to be distinct, joyful, intentional, emergent and collaborative. That we would be one in name was a priority.
2. Newness. For the joy of sharing in the newness of identity, and to accurately reflect the equal measure with which we both leave and cleave to a new thing. 
3. Symmetry. To include both previous names means both histories and inheritances endure, even while both are beginning something distinct  and synthesise in a way that reflects the process we ourselves feel ourselves going through.
4. Process. There is a challenge in under going the change itself, a process of bureaucracy essentially, but a symbolic exercise that is particular and distinct, as the cocoon is distinct from both caterpillar and butterfly, and we both would like to go through this process.
5. Patriarchy. There is an industrial norm that value and therefore name is claimed by the male one who goes away from the home to the place of work. It is our hope that our home would be the primary place of our ministry and it is a long term hope that we would find authentic and profound ways to integrate variously valued aspects of both out lives, works, home. Mardi Keyes speak on this profoundly (if not specifically about surnames) in Gender and Vocation http://www.labri-ideas-library.org/download.asp?fileID=803
6. vs Individualism. It could be claimed that in choosing to discontinue both our family names we have chosen to privilege the fleeting moment over a larger family story, in a way that will complicate things for our children's children's surnames. These things have not been taken on lightly, and it is our hope that the joy in this new thing will bring life and freedom, and we have already enjoyed to abrieve a PJ, but these things will bubble up as we go.

This seems a suitable place to say that we are now:
sarahpawlettjackson [at] gmail [dot] com
philpawlettjackson [at] gmail [dot] com

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