Driving up Spain's Sierra Nevada mountains to Granada,all I could think of were patterns. I watched patterns of mountains notch into valleys and fields, fallow and fertile, slip into one another. I saw olive and orange trees line up and the earth crease and fold around them as if firmly holding it all safe for my eyes alone.
Gregory Bateson once said in Mind and Nature, “What pattern connects the crab to the lobster, and the orchid to the primrose and all four of them to me? And me to you?...The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns."
Whether it’s the frost patterns on my Vermont windows this morning, or an intricate spider web pattern, I sense Her presence in all these mystical metapatterns.
After our side trip on a dirt road back into the alham--the "red earth of Granada," we visited the Alhambra itself where more patterns piled up on more patterns. Arches upon arches. Tiles upon tiles. Dark into light. And I thought, "This is Her work. This is Her visible code encouraging me to see how everything is connected, how everything fits so perfectly into everything else and how it’s all crucial to the workings of not just our planet, but of the galaxy and universes beyond. She is there, making sure the stitches of the world-tapestry hold together. And when we take the time to really look, we can see her radiance shining through the pinpricks,
sliding off the glazed tiles."
Before the Alhambra became a city state and filled this space with arches and symmetrical gardens, even before the Romans and Visigoths took up residence, it was a place where The Mother was honored, high up there on Sabika hill where Her crystalline water poured from springs fed by snow-capped mountains and where her birds sang.
My Sophia Friend Julia Blackbourn graciously shared with me some of her sketches of another patterned site about 70 kilometers from Grandada where the famous cathedral of Cordoba welcomes people into her huge courtyard. Her watercolors capture the patterns in these massive arches better than any photos I took, so I'm happy, with her blessing, to share a couple with you.
I believe Sophia can be seen through arches and in all pattern overlays; She is present everywhere--in the beautiful as well as the dismal parts of our world.
[As a sidenote: an audio guide to Sophia: The Feminine Face of God,a 10 part series, is available for listening or downloading at:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/divineartsmedia/2012/01/11/sophia-feminine-face-of-god-10-series-w-karen-speerstra]
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