Sophia Serve

Salvaged

Next to hardware stores, my favorite collection of stuff is stashed into a  huge warehouse called "Vermont Salvage.”  Old wooden doors stand open on either end, so you have to be hardy to shop there in winter.

It’s THE place to go if you're looking for old door knobs or bathtubs. Green-bronzed horses or cast-iron radiators. Arches and architectural leftovers from the insides of abandoned churches. Stained glass windows line one whole wall, right behind rows and rows of sinks. And just across the aisle, about a hundred toilets line up like frosty choristers in this open cathedral of commodes.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “A paradox is a truth standing on its head waving its legs to attract attention.” There I stood, red-nosed, hands in my pockets and ears tingling from the cold, juxtaposed with these unlikely neighbors paradoxically waiting to be rescued once again and taken to some warmer place. Like Harry Potter, I had conjured up these magical foreign gadgets, this bizarre metal and glass menagerie mutely waving their legs at me.

I wandered the aisles, but kept returning to the stained glass lined up against the walls. These warehouse owners are far too savvy to have any Tiffany lurking around, I was quite sure, but some of them looked so lovely lounging there in ornate frames, dusty and smudged, but still intact. How can sand, salt and ash create something as beautiful as stained glass?

During both world wars, the people of Chartres saved their famous glass windows by burying them in mines or in the crypt itself. No small feat since the 116 glass windows cover the equivalent of an acre of space!

 

Eight  hundred years earlier, three stained glass masterpieces nearly met the rubbish heap. While most of Chartres Cathedral burned in 1194, the western wall was saved. Salvaged. One window hung there in the smoke like a giant jewel-encrusted brooch. It’s called “The Blue Virgin Window” because of the rich blues against a ruby-red background. Most early stained glass artists used copper for red, iron for yellow and cobalt for blue. But Chartres’ glaziers, alchemists in their own right, created a blue so intense, so rare, that no one has duplicated it.

This window is a testament to many things, not least of which to the artists themselves, for reds and blues were the most difficult glass colors to create. Stained glass artists worked at their benches often flashing up to forty coats of glazings just to get the right hue and luminosity. For these ruby reds they overlaid green, purple, brown and yellow. What made matters ever more challenging, they couldn’t view their work until it was actually hung.

But beyond the craft, this crowned “empress mother” and her child speak to the creativity of soul-salvaging.

The stained glass windows at the Vermont Salvage were simpler designs composed mostly of yellows, browns and greens. No rubies or lapis lazuli, but still, they were a welcome break from winter’s white. And my soul took note.

 

 

 

 

The Book of Love

For anyone who devours books about Mary Magdalene—and I suspect
we’re a growing number since The Da Vinci Code movie and Brown’s prequel, the upcoming Angels and Demons have introduced more people to the Magdelene“heresy”—Kathleen McGowan is someone you need to know.

Ever since reading The Expected One, I’ve been eagerly awaiting her second—The Book of Love. She’s not an author who disappoints. Like her heroine, Maureen Paschal, it’s obvious Kathleen's mission is to uncover stories of extraordinary women who dared to challenge the world. History often either misrepresents these women or denigrates them—often actually killing them. Matilda the 11th century countess of Tuscany, heroine of The Book of Love, is one such woman. As it turns out, she is the only woman buried in St. Peter’s basilica and when you read the book, you’ll learn why.

But it’s her coverage of the origins and importance of the labyrinth, information about Chartres and the Cathars as well as the way McGowan

  introduces Sophia that captivates me. She reminds us that the Gnostics believed the Holy Spirit was female, in the guise of Sophia--sometimes depicted as a dove.

 
She quotes from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip: “Some say that Mary was impregnated by the grace of the Holy Spirit. But they do not know what they say. How can the feminine impregnate the feminine?” (p. 375) 

And she introduces readers to the Genesis verses that tell us God said, “Let us make man in our image…”  and “The Lord God said, ‘Behold, man has become as of of us, to know good and evil…”  The “us” indicates “The equal, female face of God, if you will. The feminine half that completes the male half of God.” (p. 376)

Sophia.  Our Lady.  Our sweet dove. She's far from a new idea, of course. In fact the mystical Lutheran shoemaker and writer, Jacob Boehme wrote about her as the third part of the Trinity way back in 1620. But now Sophia appears in what will undoubtedly become McGowan’s second New York Time’s best selling book. And many more people will discover Sophia, as well as that legendary lost manuscript, The Book of Love.