Caedmon Joseph Wolfe

b. July 20, 2010
8 lbs., 9 oz.; 20.5 in.

Caedmon Joseph Wolfe was born today, July 20, 2010, at 3:08 p.m., at the Sandman Hotel in Langley, British Columbia. Mommy and baby are happy and healthy. The first hints of labor started just after 11 a.m., and we arrived at the hotel—to a room whose bathroom shared a wall with the manager’s office—just 23 minutes before the birth.

About the name:
The original Caedmon (pronounced ['keid.mən]) was the 7th century father of Christian English poetry. According to the medieval English historian Bede, Caedmon served as a herder at a monastery in Yorkshire. Ashamed of his complete inability to sing, one night he retreated to sleep among the animals when feasting monks took up their harps to celebrate. That night in a dream an angel ordered him to sing of God’s creation. The nine-line alliterative hymn Caedmon produced in response (so the story goes) is among the earliest extant poems in our language. For the first time in recorded church history, worship sounded like English folk music, in its language and rhythms.

Caedmon went on to create a prolific body of devotional poetry in English, much of it refashioned from Latin Bible stories, all of it now lost. Bede says of Caedmon’s impact that “by his poem-songs the spirits of many men were kindled to contempt of the world and to service of a heavenly life.” Scholar and Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien writes that his poetry “deeply stirred his generation”; LoTR fans may not realize that Tolkien’s own term “Middle Earth” comes from a word in Caedmon’s Hymn (via the later poet Cynewulf).

The legend of Caedmon, told when English was a backwater dialect on the skirts of Latin Europe, captures the beauty of the Christian story. The God of Christian tradition speaks the languages of all of His people, not just the world’s powerful, prestigious ones like the Latin of Caedmon’s day—or like the English of ours.

The Bible’s timeless narrative of Joseph speaks of one rising out of wrenching tragedy to a position of tremendous influence. For those of us who have found redemptive value in life’s most inexplicable pains, Joseph’s words to his brothers hold special meaning: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20). The name also echoes Jodel’s name as his sister Andi’s does mine. Lastly, it recalls my late grandfather, Joseph Henry Wolfe (1917-1998).