2022 the year we learn to listen to love

Week 42--in which we ponder the mystery and power hidden in a name  

Friends, soul writers, mystics, witches, and lovers of prayer,

This is my first week back in my chair in my writing office working in happy partnership with my new computer. She is a Dell and I suddenly realized she needed and wanted a name.

Do you do this? Do you name important things in your life?

Your car, for example, does she have a name? My hybrid Saturn Aura was Michaela and I loved her. But in the hot Florida sun, her hybrid battery started to corrode. Only I didn’t know that. Nor did the technicians. Until they opened the huge battery and saw it was green.

I had to get a new car. And I had to get it that day.

I told the sales guy I wanted the smallest used car they had. It’s a General Motors dealership and the lot was filled with massive trucks. I am not a massive truck person. I am not even a truck person. So the sales guy walked me over to the smallest Buicks, the Encores. A small SUV. There were four on the lot. One white, one grey, one red, and one bright blue.

I took one look at the first one in the row, the white one and I practically screamed I can NOT NOT NOT buy a white Buick! The look on his face required some explanation.

So I told him. My uncle in Chicago had a Buick dealership and every new car my father got was a white Buick. Every. Single. One. I just could not get a white Buick. As for the grey? How dreary. And the red? I’m past the red car phase. I had a tomato red sporty sexy Sterling years ago. With suede seats and burl wood, no less. Oh, how I loved that car. But a red Buick SUV doesn’t have quite the same cache, now, does it.

So that left the blue. I’ve had blue cars before. My beautiful hybrid Saturn, she of the corroded battery, was a deep dark blue. And I loved her. This Encore however was not a regal blue. She was bright blue. Electric blue. Bit of a shock to the eyes. But I told the sales guy, “I’ll take her.”

So bright blue Buick came home with me.

I parked her in the driveway and patted her door as I got out. I stood beside her glowing blue presence and asked her, What’s your name?

For a fleeting second, I considered Michaela, because I do think that’s a perfect name for a car, especially for me. But it didn’t fit this one’s short tall bright blue very functional being. She’s small and sturdy and I sensed she has come to me to carry me safely where I need to go.

And where I need to go, you might have heard me say, is the Hudson River Valley. In November 2019 I got this intense urge to move to New York. Where, I confess, I’ve never been. (Minor detail.) If that makes no sense to you, please know that my son is a public defender in Queens and will always be a New York guy. He must have been a New Yorker in countless lifetimes. He fits there. He belongs there.

And he is my one and only.

So it seemed like a good idea to move to the Hudson River within a two-hour drive of the city, get a small house, and when the time came, he could inherit it.

Great idea. Great plan. But tell that to Covid.

Now, I know gazillions of people moved during Covid but I just couldn’t see how to do it. It didn’t feel right. And my house wasn't ready to sell. So I didn’t move. Instead, I fixed up my house, who needed a lot of attention. And she got it. She’s quite lovely now. Still a bit more to paint and fix, but she’s looking sweet. And I trust the day will come when I will feel ready to move to New York. But not today.

So, standing in the driveway, looking at my sweet bright blue, very sensible Buick, I heard Woodstock.

• At first I thought that meant the town. This safe car could definitely get me to the environs around Woodstock.
• But then the cartoon Peanuts popped into my head. Woodstock is that adorable bright yellow bird who constantly falls out of his nest, into love, and into adventure. Mishaps that his best friend, Snoopy, is at-the-ready to rectify.
• And of course, Woodstock was that sacred moment of music and magic in 1969 that can never be repeated. That moment, when we knew who we were and the world we could create. Never mind that none of that came to pass, the moment was still infused with love and possibility. And Janis and Jimi and Joan (and Joanie should have been there, too, but her idiot managers kept her in the city so she could be on a TV show. Sigh.)

So on many levels, Woodstock is the perfect name for my car. But, if you know me, you know I had to calculate the numerology before I signed off on it.

What are the chances? Woodstock is a 35/8 and I am a 35/8. I dare say Woodstock was waiting for me in the parking lot that day.

So, about my new computer’s name.

She’s a Dell and Della rose to the surface but somehow that didn’t feel right. Too obvious and bland. My computer wanted a more mysterious name. A more evocative one.

Well, you can’t get more evocative or controversial than Delilah!

Peter Paul Rubens

• You know. That supposedly awful woman who discovered Samson’s secret and cut off his hair. (Can’t you just hear Leonard Cohen’s Halleluiah? Watch K D Lang sing it as she twists the mike cord around her arm…whoa!)
• And then there’s the story of Delilah in Tom Jones’ famous song. As usual, the guy is the bad guy. He commits murder, but, of course, he blames his lack of control on her sensuality and freedom.

Do you see a theme here?

I didn’t connect the dots until I sat down to tell you this story. Delilah is the perfect name for my electronic partner, on whom and with whom I will write these newsletters and prepare my new prayer intensives for 2023.

And the theme for everything I do is about recognizing and walking away from all the lies embedded in patriarchal society.

And the foundational lie is that women and our beautiful, life-giving bodies are the cause of evil (thank you Genesis) and the temptation of men.

It’s an old story, but its poison is alive and well in the constant narratives about domestic violence (look what you made me do!), rape (look what she was wearing!), imprisonment (she broke the law!) and even murder (see Breonna Taylor.)

So I think Delilah is the perfect name for my right-hand woman, my computer. She and I have a lot of mystical witch and prayer artist work to do to use our voices to name the lies and speak the truth.

Want further proof?

Her name comes to a 33/6. Three is creativity, the divine child, the creation of the God and the Goddess, the Sacred Green Man and the Mother, the 1 and the 2. So 33 is double creativity. And it all comes to a 6. This year is a six. And six is the pregnant woman.

Am I pregnant? Oh boy am I pregnant.

During my 9-day “No Name Vacation” (see last Sunday’s Notes from the Field) She dropped several new seeds of BIG sacred work in me.

It feels like a mystical magical Woodstock moment. I am pregnant with possibility.

I think that’s why the physical move hasn’t happened yet. I have so many exciting events to create, books to write, intensives to gather, and prayers to sing in 2023.

It’s my small part in seeing the path, walking the path, and praying the path from their dreadful garden overflowing with lies about the feminine all the way to Her Garden of Reverence.

It's a Woodstock/Delilah moment. And I think I need a theme song!

to the mystery and magic hiding in plain sight in a name!

Janet

PS: 2022 has been, and continues to be, a wild year filled with chaos and magic. And we have no business jumping into 2023 until we look back at and uncover the deeper meaning of this year.

So be here next Sunday when you get your first invitation to gather in the Theatre of the Miraculous for The Lotus and the Lily: Complete 2022 and Create 2023
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