What’s in a name…? Synchronicity.

A phenomenon that has pushed itself to the forefront of my life.

I created this website 2 years ago. Almost to the day. On November 7, 2019 this particular blog post was last edited, and still contained the latin filler text that is the default when a page (and its author) are brand new to the world. And there it sat, just a whisper of an idea, waiting for me to figure out why I had created it in the first place.

I can say that I still am not clear on the “why” part. But now, I am quite clear that there IS a reason, and I am confident I will find this reason, or purpose, when it is time. Until then, let me tell you how I arrived here today, breathing new life into an all-but-forgotten website that I created without understanding why…

Musings of a Magdalene. This name came to me without effort, and without understanding. I remember looking up the term “magdalene”, and I found plenty of references to Mary Magdalene, to religion, to Christianity, to sinners, to prostitutes… and this confused me, because I have never been religious, and could not have told you who Mary Magdalene was at that time. Nor did I believe that a magdalene was a prostitute or sinner – in fact, I was offended somehow by the associations I was finding, which was really odd, seeing as I had no religious upbringing or knowledge on which to base any of this. But for whatever reason, I felt compelled to create this page using the term derived from her name and history. I “knew” somehow that there was more to this than I could connect at the time. But I had no idea where to start to figure that out. So I didn’t. I simply left it be.

In the meantime, my life was moving on, as it always does, with me caught up in the motions of it all. Through a random mix of happenstance and intent, I navigate each day, always optimistic that it will end well, and that another will begin even better. During this time, at the end of 2019, I was planning my wedding to the father of my children (not on speaking terms with my mother related to this event), working on my business as usual, and trying to raise my boys in the best way I knew how. But I had already been in therapy since March, and I was beginning to learn things about myself that I didn’t want to know yet. Things that would rock my world as I knew it. But, I digress… we will swing back to this, in all its messy (but highly entertaining) glory.

Now fast forward to September 24 this year, just 4 weeks ago, when I met with some amazing women who I am lucky to be associated with – let’s call them my Sisters. My Sisters are a small group of local women who share thoughts, ideas, feelings, and knowledge, and who are brought together by one guiding light of a woman, who we will call Jean. As we sat in a circle, snacking and chatting with each other, Jean mentioned that she had recently read a book called “Mary Magdalene Revealed”, and my ears instantly perked up. I wrote it down in my journal, and asked her what it was about. She said “it’s an account of Mary Magdalene, as told by a woman theologian”. I was still embarrassed to admit that I didn’t really know who Mary Magdalene was, so I said “oh, interesting!”, and silently committed to buying the book and figuring it all out.

This past week, the book finally arrived. I was quite reluctant to read it, because there is a reason I’ve not been religious in my life – organized religion turns my stomach. It’s always been uncomfortable and foreboding and generally unpleasant as far as my experiences go. Churches are intimidating, cold, structured, and smell funny. I never understood why a person would have to go to one in order to pray or practice religion. So, I didn’t. The thought of reading a religious book was truly out of my norm. But this book may have answers for me! I decided. And the answers I was looking for began to pour out…

Mary Magdalene was an apostle to Jesus Christ. The first female apostle. And she wrote her own Gospel, but it was excluded from the Bible (and from all of history until 1955). But she is the one who teaches us to “see with the eye of the heart”, as Meggan Watterson has interpreted it.¹ It took me only to page 8 of this book to realize I had absolutely chosen this name for a reason, as I read words written by the author that sounded eerily similar to words that had come out of my own mouth years prior: “I felt my love for my son, and let that love, which contains unfaltering forgiveness, extend to me. As I found so often, my love for him teaches me how to love myself, how to let love reach within me where it has never been before.” *exhale* My own words weren’t as eloquent as Meggan’s, and weren’t quite as clear either. I remember saying to my Sisters, when my first son was a toddler, that he was teaching me how to love, and that I wanted to be more like him. Because that child is just FULL of love. And so am I, though it’s been suppressed in many ways for many years.

So here we are, my first blog post on this page that came into existence cloaked in mystery. Except now, so much more makes sense. Not only do I identify as a “magdalene” myself, an imperfect woman determined to exist from her heart and with love (i.e. not a sinful prostitute)… but I suspect that there are many others out there who do also, as is evident in the writings of Meggan Watterson, who I am so grateful to for sharing her voice via this book… which (I literally just looked to see) was written in 2019. Synchronicity.

¹ The little bit I wrote about Mary Magdalene is the little bit I learned and summarized from Mary Magdalene Revealed, by Meggan Watterson. I highly recommend this book, even though I haven’t myself yet finished it.