My mother recently sent me this picture of her father’s parents, Annie and Arthur Giles. Up until three weeks ago, I’d never seen Arthur ~ I look a lot like my great-grandfather.

Then there’s Annie looking off camera, focused, determined as the Scottish Enlightenment. Curiously enough she’s wearing a Star of David on her blouse; no idea what that means, it’s just there with her, spiritual cartography.

My dad has been researching as well, just yesterday discovering for the first time (from a ship manifest) that his dad first came over from Hungary when he was an infant. My dad always assumed his father first came over in 1925, as a young man.

A few years back, while helping my business partner Terry Woodthorpe prepare for a trip to the City of London, to research his own family tree in the UK, I sat at my desk in the office thinking to myself, “I know a bit about Terry’s back story, but what about my own?” Terry was raised an orphan in Western Canada. His father was an RAF pilot who trained in Western Canada with 130,000 other British airmen. Lost at sea near the end of the war, Terry’s father’s name is rightfully high on the wall of the Runnymede memorial. At one time, Terry’s grandfather was Chairman of the Trustee Savings Bank in the City of London.

As I walked with Terry through his own story, I began researching my own surname. When I did a search on Bartha, it came up that Justin Bartha was a Jewish actor, and I was like, okay so what is that about exactly. I did a search for Jewish surnames etc, and came across JewishGen website, put our surname in and watched a few hits come up in various places, curious enough a number of years ago; I put it aside.

For some reason, two weeks ago, I searched Yad Vashem website for the first time, and there are over 800 Barth’s and Bartha’s (Barth is German and Polish, Bartha is Hungarian) who are chronicled as having perished in the Holocaust one way or another.

My dad has recently been documenting his family names at an ancestry website, uncovering more documentation back through the generations. So, I’ve been putting all these surnames through JewishGen and Yad Vashem, and they are all in there, dozens of one, hundreds of another, etc. Then yesterday, I saw a document saying my grandmother’s brother-in-law was buried in a graveyard in Budapest where 300,000 Jews are buried, bit by bit, piecing together a silent narrative.

Someone with my grandfather’s full name survived one concentration camp, while someone with my father’s full name perished at another. Having prayed through so many names on so many lists, I’m not sure if there is any further connection to all of this other than the coincidence of a lot of people having the same names. Yet, from Lord Shaftesbury to Benjamin Netenyahu my ongoing studies raise many ancient and modern questions about names, peoples, and lands.

Last weekend, I spoke at a camp full of Indonesians. As we came together, we all had name tags pinned to us. When I got up to speak the first time, I asked them all to take off their name tags and put them in a big pile in the middle of the floor. Then, I invited them all to pick up a name that wasn’t their own. I asked them to pray for that person even if they didn’t know them. Then, after a few quiet minutes, I asked them to go find each other. It was a wonderful chaordic atmosphere, the tears were already flowing, and I hadn’t said anything profound, the Spirit of Adoption was already there between them.

Once they got their name tags back, I asked them if they knew what their names meant. One guy with a unique Indonesian name had no idea what his name meant. Someone did an online search discovering his name meant Sword. Then I asked my Indonesian friends, “What’s in a name? Well, my name is Kirk Bartha. Do you know what Kirk means?” (None of them knew, they’re not Scottish on their mother’s side).

In Scotland, one Kirk is a church. In Canmore, one Bartha waits.

“But look! A king will rule in the right way, and his leaders will carry out justice. Each one will stand as a shelter from high winds, provide safe cover in stormy weather. Each will be cool running water in parched land, a huge granite outcrop giving shade in the desert. Anyone who looks will see, anyone who listens will hear. The impulsive will make sound decisions, the tongue-tied will speak with eloquence. No more will fools become celebrities, nor crooks be rewarded with fame.” Isaiah 32 (The Message)