Adam Kettler Amberg

My given name is Hebrew for “man of dirt” and my surname is German for “near a mountain.” I have still yet to figure out my middle name, but I’ve got a suspicion it’s Old English for “one who makes kettles.” Thus, my full name means “that dirty old kettle-maker who lives at the foot of the mountain.”

In the Bible, lots of people were given names to place meaning and value upon their lives. King David’s parents wanted him to be “beloved” and he was, St. John’s parents wanted their child to know “God’s grace” and he found it. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think my parents chose the name Adam because they wanted me to feel like dirt, but hey. C’est la vie, right?

So wouldn’t you know it that my life has become defined by that very thing? Dirt. It’s the stuff we’re all  made of, and to which our bodies will return someday, and God won’t let me forget. It keeps me humble, knowing that I ultimately amount to nothing but a caked-mud statue with a little puff of divine carbon-dioxide in it. But dirt also serves as a blank template. From it comes all kinds of life. Hedges of pomegranates burst out of it like poetry. Mockingbirds build their nest in trees which are rooted deep in the soil. There, the little birds teach us that in life there is a song for every occasion and every tongue. Within dirt there is the hope for (to quote Douglass Adams) life, the universe, and everything.