Why the name, Phoebe? asked Inkbiotic in a comment on my last post. Thank you for this question; it meant a lot to me. The name Phoebe is the feminine form of Phoebus, which is Greek in origin and means, “bright, shining, radiant.”

I have not always understood why I needed the name Phoebe, not in fifth grade. But it has always felt “given” to me, and in that sense my True Name. To explain, I offer the last lines of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, which ends, in translation, “from here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.” These lines have always called to me. They meant that I, my “me-ness,” needed to die to the artificial self and become what it is, a being of love and light, I needed to change the “false self” full of memories, of deep woundings and petty gripes, of anger and dreams of revenge to a self of pure light and boundless forgiveness and love. In a similar way, just so my name change, from Pamela, which is Greek too, meaning “ All Sweet”, but is also a synonym for cloying, to a name that means “radiant light,” because it is only in the light of love that we humans can be seen for who we really are, children of God, the Source, the Force for Good in every human heart.

I no longer accept the world (or my past) of hurt and anger and the urge to revenge. It is gone, over and done with, a figment of my imagination, which is the only place it can live. Falter though I may, my body being only flesh and human, with this name change I hereby offer myself to Change itself, that is to the Infinite, which can be called space or The Void, but which I saw in a vision of beauty is nothing but Creative Love itself.

Remember that we are ALL of us beings of light and life, we are all God, and we all partake of and participate in That Which Creates, the Space or Void that loves everything into being. My name change is only to remind me of the Source from which I came, as did we all, and to which we all return.

(Photos in public domain)