Sophia Serve

The Art of Magnification

A friend sent me several photos by Professor Gary Greenberg who spends some of his time at the College of London photographing grains of sand. He magnifies them about 250 times. “It’s incredible,” he says, “when you’re walking on the beach, you are standing on these treasures.”

Incredible, indeed! There’s a treasure world in these grains of sand, as the poet Blake wrote in his “Auguries of Innocence.” And in them, we “hold infinity in the palm your hand/And eternity in an hour.”  That’s the same Blake who also said, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man [sic] as it is, infinite.”

Clearing our “doors of perception” is a good thing to do as the year draws to a close. What have we seen? How did we see it? And a question I, and others like me who think about Sophia from time to time, ask: “How has the Divine Feminine shown up in our lives in 2011?”

When I look closely at all the crystals and spirals within these grains of sand, I can’t help but think of the tons—literally tons—of sand that washed over people’s land and lives in Vermont during the August tropical storm Irene. Sand that carried horrid toxins. Sand that turned to cement in a few days. Sand that washed away top soil. If I’d have had Dr. Greenberg’s magnifying camera, could I have seen these amazing designs in all that hurt?

Then I think of all the volunteers who flocked to Vermont's disaster areas--and are still working long hours to make sure that flood-damaged families will be warm and safe this winter.

The year has been filled with gifts as well as challenges. I heard Angela Waters from Oklahoma telling her story on NPR the other day. She is collecting photographs the tornado at Joplin blew hundreds of miles away last May. Thanks to Facebook and her passion, people have mailed her thousands of photos they have found. She scans them and posts them on her website hoping to find who they belong to and return them. Families who lost everything, sometimes including the person in the photo, can now get them back. The Divine Feminine prompted her to devote months to this gift of grace.

I think of Mike who went back to where his house once stood,in our nearby village, standing in the silt, raking the sand, raking the sand, raking the sand, until his wife said, “It’s time now to stop. We won’t find anything more.”  Just then his rake caught on a box—her jewelry box that contained her mother’s engagement ring which she has now given to her daughter. The Divine Feminine knew the box was there. And she knew the ring was a bit of “infinity” to be held in the young woman’s hand, reminding her of her grandmother. And the family who loves her.

 

Sophia's present in all the “grains of sand” around us, including the grit in our shoes, if we just practice the art of

 

magnification.

 

An Extravagant Kindness

“…to fling rainbows over the rain

And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows

On the domes of deep sea-shells…

There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,

The extravagant kindness."

            Robinson Jeffers, “The Excesses of God”

Photo by Anne Ahmad

On Sanibel Island shells stack up as deep on the beaches as you care to dig. What determines a shell’s value, I wondered, years ago, as I watched our young sons play in the waves. The intensity of its rainbow? Loren Eiseley in The Star Thrower, described a beach comber, a star-thrower, who threw starfish back into the water. That masterful biologist-essayist challenged us, instead of grabbing, collecting, hoarding, we try “flinging ourselves into unknown dimensions of existence.”  That’s what rainbows do. They take us from our comfortable murky brown existence and fling us into an irridescent heaven.

I'll bet, like me, you're humming "somewhere over the rainbow," right now. Many poets have tried to capture the beauty of rainbows. Wordsworth’s heart “leaped up” when he saw one. Shelley relayed rainbows to life: "a many-colored dome illuminated by the white light of Eternity.” Virgil said a rainbow "a thousand intermingled colors throws." D.H. Lawrence called rainbows "the feet of the arch that Lord God rested the worlds on," while Jack Kerouac called it "a hoop for the lowly."

As a child, I learned that God sent a rainbow to Noah's family who, for weeks, had been stuffed into a wooden ship with lots of, what must have been by then, very smelly animals. It was a sign. It meant there would be no more world floods. I've read that many Medieval people believed the rainbow would not appear in the sky for 40 years before the end of the world. So when it appeared, they heaved a great sigh of relief. They knew they could count on at least 40 more years!

Early Australians called the rainbow a great serpent, holding the earth together. In Native American myths, rainbows come down from the heavens to connect us to grandmother spirit.

On another trip, this time to Cozumel, I met up with Ix Chel. She's called "Lady Rainbow" and wears a serpent on her head--a sign of her great wisdom. She's also known as "Moon Lady" and regulates pregnancies.  Early Peruvian people tell of how a young girl’s menstrual blood gave birth to the rainbow. From Ix Chel’s “womb jar,” she pours birthing waters onto the earth.

Ayahuasca, the brew, some South Americans still make from what they call the Mother Vine, often creates rainbowed visions that usually include multi-colored snakes. Central and South American people had a tradition of  standing in silence and awe for as long as the rainbow appeared.

The Greeks called the Rainbow, Iris, daughter of the God of Wonder and the West Wind. Rainbow cloaks wrap people in magical ways. Like the Japanese, my Norse relatives, who called the rainbow Bifrost,believed it to be a bridge from one world to the next. In early Iran and Iraq ziggurats were called stepped rainbows and each of the seven steps was painted a different color—a key color of a planet. The lowest stage was black; the highest, red and at the top was a gilded and blue-tiled shrine. We move, it seems, from a darkened underworld, up into the light.

Long before Isaac Newton bent light through a prism and "discovered" a rainbow, the Romans created rainbows by refracting light through glass rods. Newton claimed to see about eleven refracted colors, but he settled on only seven so they would match a musical octave.

Carl Jung says in his book Psychology and Alchemy, “Only the gods walk rainbow bridges in safetly…human beings must pass under it.” What’s active inside a rainbow—or a double one as my friend Anne has depicted here. Dreams? Magic? Active spirits? Angels? Peace? Hope?

Looking at rainbows makes us feel as if we’re caught in a holy fire. However we view them, rainbows are, indeed, acts of extravagant kindness.

Yuks, Yoiking and Joik

Thanks to my active presence in a wonderful web offering called The Powers of Place Initiative and it’s interactive website I have read some of Kye Nelson’s new poetry form: joiku

They fill me with joy. Check them out. 

Anyone following SophiaServe for long might remember that I’m quite enamored of ancestry.com’s ability to pull all kinds of people off the limbs of your tree and one of mine happens to be a Sami woman. They’re the reindeer people from the far north and I read every book about them I can get my hands on. Most celebrate their shamans. Some fight for their reindeer rights. Some just sing. From Leonova Carrington’s novel: The Healing Trumpet I learned of a Sami shaman, who sings and tells of tales of power. Lapland’s triple goddesses are called: Sar, Juks and Yuks. Aha!

She ends her book this way:
“If the old woman can’t go to Lapland, then Lapland must come to the old woman.”

As I approach  my 71^st birthday in a few days, I'm “yoiking.”

Another book I loved is Creation’s Heartbeat   Following in the Reindeer Spirit by Linda Schiere Leonard. A dream of running with pregnant reindeer inspired her book. For the Sami people the passageway to the “other world” is through what they call “Lapp Gate” in Northern Norway. Other names for this gate are Kiruura in Northern Sweden and Kautokeino in Finland.

The other day a fawn hopped across our driveway and I was reminded of my own fawn dream a few years back when one came to me and I cradled it, feeling its warm fur and large beating heart.I kept it safe. Every now and then, I attempt to “joik” it back to me.

I describe my own encounter with the Sami Folk Minister in Stockholm a few years ago in Sophia: The Feminine Face of God (which by the way is about to publish by Divine Arts) or read about it here by clicking on its cover to the right.

By now, you can see why Kye Nelson’s joiku found a warm place in my heart.  She joins the precise line form of a haiku (5-7-5) or sometimes (5-6-5) with the Sami process of the Joik or Yoik—calling back to make physically present someone or something that might not be in your present physical reality. It celebrates their truth—their strengths and their frailties. It celebrates the essence of that person, place or thing in as few words as possible. Now when I contemplate an invocation, I’ll think: “in-yoik-ation.” Here’s a tribute to my mother, Kye, and thanks!

 

She baked rhubarb pies

from lush umbrellas of green

Dad watered and fed.

 

Some had crispy tops

Some shimmering meringues

All spoke of her love.

Agora Hearts

As thousands upon thousands of Egyptians waved flags, sang and danced in Cairo's Tahrir Square, I watched, numb with the realization of how fast change can happen. For those camped out for eighteen days, it may not have felt like the blinking of an eye, but after thirty years of iron-fisted control, hearts finally brimmed to overflowing with hope. They can now believe in a different future. I was watching a love-fest organized by cell phones, Facebook and twitter.

Our own TV and radio talking heads, of course, immediately began to ask, “Why didn’t we know about this sooner and what now? Be afraid. Very afraid!” Some blamed the socialists and communists and even the “feminists” for what happened in Egypt and foretold Middle East disaster.

I switched to DVD mode and popped in my latest Netflix.

Rachel Weisz’s Hypatia of Alexandria took me back to another time in Egypt when blood did run red in Egypt’s market places. Alejandro Amenábar directed this wonderful epic film set at the end of the 300’s. As religions clashed and the Roman military fell to a new Christian emperor, the Jews were driven out. Agora is the story of how a new regime came to power in Egypt--by sheer people power, religious ideals, swords and stones.

Hypatia, the brilliant mathematician, astronomy and philosophy teacher became the focal point for an emerging culture hell-bent on silencing women. Clement of Alexandria claimed Jesus had warned, “I have come to destroy the works of the female.” Paul’s words were read to the masses. Suddenly, women’s wisdom meant nothing.

I’ve read enough to know how tragically this story would end, but thankfully instead of showing her flayed by deranged fanatical monks wielding oyster shells, she died looking up into her beloved heavens. It was she who figured out the elliptical movements of the planets, but it took 1200 years for Kepler and everyone else to catch on.

Tears came to my eyes as I watched the Library of Alexandria sacked and burned. Alexander, himself, had ordered it built and earlier Ptolemy rulers collected everything written up to that time. By the first century B.C., the “Mother” library held 700,000 books—rolls all arranged by category. It was a world-wide depository of learning. Isis' priestesses carried volumes around to outlying libraries. Mark Antony added to it by stealing the Pergamum library of 200,000 volumes as a gift for Cleopatra. Every ship that came into the harbor had to yield its library to be copied and stored there. Cookbooks, magic, natural history, drama, poetry, each scroll was written on both sides, and was about twenty feet long or equal to about sixty pages of our books today. Seventy-two Jewish scholars once translated a Hebrew Bible into Greek. Philo who was a star pupil of Moses and Plato, thought that philosophy was the way to search for the highest truths. Hypatia followed in his sandal-tracks.

A “Daughter” library, at the time this movie was set,held 42,800 rolls. The Christians broke in since it was housed in the temple of Serapis,and Theophilus allowed it all to be destroyed. Later, Caliph Omar would heat public baths with most of the remaining rolls. One in ten of the Greek classics survived.

I ejected the disk and went into my office lined with bookshelves. There I sat for a long time thinking about Hypatia, Egypt, books, and most importantly, about fragile beating hearts.

Advent and Rocamadour's Quiet Music

Black virgins pepper Europe with a soul-spiciness few can explain. I certainly can’t. I only know I’d go on those tours designed to visit as many as possible across Europe if I could manage it.

However, during this “Advent season," a season of watchful “Advent-ure” for Christians, I am grateful for having visited my second one. (The first was at Chartres many years ago.) Allow me to introduce you to the black virgin of Rocamadour.
She's hidden away in one of the chapels high on a limestone cliff overlooking the Alzou Valley in the Dordogne. 

From what I've read, statues called black virgins predate Christianity which means that she may be patterned after Isis and her son after Horus. Perhaps she is an homage to Coptic Christians. Others claim she is black simply because she is so old and the wood has darkened.The black queen. The dark mother. The Mysterious One. I saw Michelle Obama in her eyes--and all strong women over the ages, reflected back to me

Pausing for a moment on one of the 216 well-worn steps,I looked back up to where she quietly waits, surrounded there in the dark by candles. I found myself thinking of miracles and legends.  

Just being on those stairs brought me several steps closer to the people who left Palestine after Jesus was killed and made their way to the coast of France. Two such legendary figures were Veronica and her husband Zacheus later known as Amadour. They’d been with Jesus, wiped the sweat off his face, protected Mary, his mother.

After his wife’s death, the old hermit traveled to this particular valley and built a chapel in honor of Mary. Overlays of stories and miracles built up over the centuries still echo through the limestone layers that surround his burial place. His beloved rocks continue to call people. How her statue came to be there remains a mystery. But Francis Poulenc’s music may offer a clue—he experienced her profound presence in Rocamadour which resulted in his famous “Litanies of the Black Virgin.

Her voice through music may be the only way some of will ever actually hear her.

Vision of a New Normal

Her 12th-century Benedictine world came alive on the screen as Hildegard's music permeated the small art theater where the German film Vision was showing.  It stars Barbara Sukowa as the Rhineland woman who was "tithed" when she was nine--given to the church-- since she was her parents' tenth child.  Life in the cloistered monastary was to become her "new normal."

The nun, Jutta, her anorexic mentor and new "mother," taught her many things. But it was the brilliant visions she experienced since the age of three, that taught her the most. This film directed by Margarethe von Trotta does an admirable job of showing us her challenges as a woman of the time, of her music, her knowledge of herbs and stones. But the movie does not show us her paintings, such as this one called "Cultivating the Cosmic Tree."

Plate 7, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen, Matthew Fox

Hildegard’s vision of all creatures being sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance led her to paint a fiery world, a divine flame circling, ever rotating, ever changing. In this mandala, she captured moisture, air, fruit, seeds, trees in all stages of life. We see the essence of regeneration. Earth, air, fire, water. It’s all there. It’s all we have and all we have needed for generations. But things have changed in the 800 years since she lived.

I find myself wondering what Hildegard would have made of Bill McKibben’s new book, eaarth?  He spells it that way because our planet, the one Hildegard knew so well, and the one we have known all our lives, no longer exists. Hence a new spelling for a different planet presenting a new normal for all of us.

With the help of a small cadre of students, Bill launched a worldwide movement called 350.org to bring to our attention the limits of carbon dioxide per million in our air which presents the outermost limits of safety for this cosmic place on which we now stand. We've already exceeded it. He fully believes we are headed toward dispersed and localized societies that can somehow survive the damage to our “eaarth” which, sadly, we can now no longer prevent.

Our new planet demands new habits We’re in a “new normal” now —a fiery wheel which Hildegard reminds us needs our cultivation and our collective holy wisdom.

“Out of the original source of the true Love in whose knowledge the cosmic wheel rests, there shines forth an exceedingly precise order over all things. And this order which preserves and nourishes everything comes to light in a way that is ever new…”

                                                               Hildegard of Bingen

 

 

Queen Matilda's Tapestry

When is a tapestry not a tapestry?

When it’s a 230 foot long embroidered linen panel stitched in eight shades of wool thread depicting the Battle of Hastings of 1066. Latin inscriptions describe how Harold Godwinson of Wessex rowed over to Normandy to fight Count Guy, only to be taken captive.  Duke William demands his release (I’m sure there’s a back story here) and Harold says “I’m sorry—I swear fealty to you. Honest.” Harold returns to England and after Edward’s death becomes King Harold II and immediately breaks his oath and starts planning for another invasion of William's territory.

Now we all know histories are written by the victors and this embroidered account was likely designed and commissioned by William’s half-brother Odo, Earl of Kent and Bishop of Bayeux. It was embroidered by William's wife Matilda and her nun friends—or by stitchers in Canterbury. Either way, the embroidery does not glorify the English side of things.

There was a big fight;  Harold’s killed. Wm. The Conqueror becomes King of England and Normandy/Brittany.

 

We visited Bayeux in the morning and spent the afternoon in several of Normandy’s ten World War II cemeteries and climbed around Allied landing beaches, now ringed by golf courses. We visited Ste. Mere-Eglise where an American paratrooper named Jim Steel still hangs in effigy from the church steeple. We also visited the famous Peace Museum in Caen, learning all the gruesome details of World War II. It made for a very full day of war.

In 1066, if Matilda’s handiwork can be believed, William launched 42 Viking ships against England.  And a mere 878 years later, 7,000 ships crossed the Channel from the other direction in a matter of hours. Not to mention numerous boxy wooden gliders and 12,000 airplanes.

Matilda’s “Roll”was likely completed in 1077 just in time to fit around the nave of the new Bayeux Cathedral .

The tapestry depicts a total of 623 people—only seven are women and only three can be identified. One is believed to be Edith, the wife of Edward the Confessor and King Harold’s sister. One is shown either trapped inside, or fleeing from, a burning building at Hastings. And a third woman referred to as “The Mysterious Lady” who has been referred to as Aelfgyva, which was a common Saxon name of the era.

After viewing the carefully lit and protected work of embroidery, I ventured into the cathedral itself. There I met this Mysterious Lady. A dove hovers--the Holy Spirit whom I call Sophia.

The dove is most likely whispering, "Mary, you're going to have a baby." But I think I heard, very faintly, the words:

No more wars. Please. No more wars!

 

 

Oh, Mama!

Through the woods, past enormous Vermont boulders. It had been raining earlier so my feet, cushioned by the moss and wet leaves, made not a sound. I could hear a faint wind chime as the path opened out to a field. A mowed path led to a newly planted tree holding the little music-maker that called me here, a huge rock, an obvious grave and a framed picture against the rock of a white-haired grandfatherly man. I had reached Thomas Berry's final resting place on the grounds of the Green Mountain Monastery near Greensboro, Vermont. I spent a few quiet moments with this theologian whom ecologists--and many of the rest of us--revere.

In an essay called "The Viable Human" he once wrote: "To be viable, the human community must move from its present anthropocentric norm to a geocentric norm of reality and value...the universe reflects on and celebrates itself in conscious self-awareness, and finds a unique fulfillment."

But now there are so many of of us, we're squeezing every last drop out of our planet. I spent the better part of that Saturday at Green Mountain Monastery trying to figure out why. What now? Who, me? 

In the mid 90s a group of North Americans visited a remote area of Ecuador and met some folks from the Amazonian Achuar tribe who realized their home--and ultimately our home--was being destroyed. Their wise elders asked their partners to the north to help save Pachamama: Mother Earth. Our Universe. The Pachamama Alliance was born. As a result many of us can now raise our awareness by asking these questions together: Where are we now?  How did we get here?  What's possible in the future?  Where do we go from here? 

Anybody can attend, as I did at Green Mt. Monastery, a symposium run by volunteers called "Awakening the Dreamer Changing the Dream."

The future doesn't need to continue as it's going right now. We've changed the game many times in the past--we can do it again. (Remember when we thought people were "property" and women couldn't vote? Remember the Berlin wall?) But we need to take off our dark glasses and come to grips with what's happening to Pachamama. And we need to do it quickly.

Take a look at how some creative folks are helping us to "see" more clearly.

In March, 4YG Four Years.Go was launched. Join Annie Leonard to learn about the Story of Stuff. Or better yet, attend one of the symposia happening in 30 countries, facilitated by over 2700 volunteers. Together we can bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on this planet. It can be the guiding principle of our times.

I think Thomas Berry would be pleased to know you've read this. And that you're willing to take a few more steps. We can keep the good and reject the bad. Together we can tell a different story. Berry said, "To tell the story of something you have to tell the story of everything."

It's ALL connected.  We're all connected. This is the only home we've got--we can't throw things away any longer because there is no "away." This is it. We're it. And as Van Jones, author of the Green Collar Economy says in one of the videos that form the symposium, "If you see a place where you wouldn't want to live, that means we've got work to do."

Oh, Mama. We love you. And we know we've got work to do!

Blue Moon Blessings

What does it mean to start a whole new decade off with a "blue moon?" Perhaps "once in a blue moon" we get a "do over." A fresh start.

Lao Tzu  wrote of a vision he had in which he traveled to the World's very beginning. There, he saw Yin. Female energy. If I could have gripped his silk jacket and floated with him into that dark space, what would I have seen? 

I imagine it may have looked something like this. One Vermont morning the fog settled in and my friend Bob Frenier took his camera out for a closer look. Out of nowhere crystals appeared on every surface of every branch of every tree.

Lao Tzu said everywhere he looked, the world was filled with "motionless grandeur."

Then Lao Tzu saw Yang--"rampant in its fiery vigor." As he put it, earth's quiet grandeur reached up to heaven's fire--maybe a blue moon kind of fire--and "the two penetrated one another, were inextricably-blended and from their union the things of the world were born."

A new year began with a blue moon in 1990 and a year won't start with a blue moon again until 2028. Because our solar calendar and our lunar calendar don't quite mesh, a solar year winds up with 11 extra days. Like Baba stacking up pretzels, they pile up until every two or three years we have an extra full moon. For some reason, we've taken to calling it "blue." Some think it's because when the volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883, the moon actually was blue for something like two years.

For whatever reason, blue moons are like that crystalline Vermont winter morning when the whole world became--at least until the sun burned it off--a fairy land of white potential.

We welcome our new decade, pulsing up out of the dark into the quiet saying,

"Make of me what you will."

Advent Dark

Unless our motion censor floods our yard with light, or the moon peeks out, we live surrounded by deep dark this time of year. After spending more than an urban decade surrounded by sirens, car alarms and booming bass bellowing from pounding cars and rarely seeing stars, rural life pulls you back to another time. A slower time. A darker quieter time.

I spotted a Santa Advent Calendar in a store the other day and I wondered how a parent explains to a kid what "advent" means if their only frame of reference is a big guy with red cheeks holding a lumpy bag. But kids do get the "waiting" part of December. They hear "not now!" enough.

The countdown to Christmas comes in many forms. Hurried trips to the post office. Stressful trips to the grocery store. Manic trips to the mall. Trips. Tripping. Tripped up.

We pack so much anxiety and nostalgia into that "Santa bag." 

So, what IS Advent? I'm not a theologian so I can only tell you what it is for me.

The Maori people of New Zealand still chant their creation story by first calling it "a breathing space of immensity." That's what Advent is.

They speak of a time when the Universe was in darkness. No light at all. That's what Advent is.

They chant: "Darkness, become a light-possessing darkness."

After my last posting about the dolphin-killing ritual still performed in Denmark, my husband's only comment was, "Well, that was dark." I thought, "Welcome to Advent."

The Maori people unwind their unique cosmology story this way: "Light, become a darkness-possessing light." That's what Advent is.

They sing: "Let there be one Light above. Let their be one Light below...a  Dominion of Light...And now a bright light prevailed."

Shadow Work: Ironic, Isn't it?

A SophiaServe reader sent me some pictures the other day that are literally gut-wrenching. And they have provided me with new insights into "irony."

Fiery Action

This wonderful image of playful, fiery activism just landed in my in-box. It's from a friend who embodies the love of our earth in ways that have inspired me for several decades. Sharon's inner beauty shines as clearly as does her Jack-o-Lantern. But it is her willingness and innate ability to show others how to sparkle as well, that aligns her, in my mind at least, to Andrew Harvey.

Artemis/Ursula

Twilight. Past our garage, around the bend, and like Artemis, her namesake, she disappeared.

All I saw was her lumbering broad brown backside. Ursula, I call her. Little Bear. By the overturned rocks, it appeared she’d been visiting my flower beds, looking for ant eggs and grubs.

The Catholic church designated October 21st as the feast day of a young girl named after a goddess and a bear and who was surrounded by a legend of no small proportions.

A teenage Cornwall princess betrothed to a guy in Brittany, she begged not to be married until she’d traveled Europe. Ursula convinced her father to let her travel with her friends for three years. So she picked up, not her backpack and a Eurail Pass, but 11,000 of her girlfriends--her handmaidens--and took off.  Eleven Thousand???  That’s  four big cruise ships full. In the fourth century? Come on!

As the story goes, a storm blew her into the Rhine River and down to Cologne (filled with bad guys called Huns). She refused to marry their chief, was shot with a bow, and all her virgin army were beheaded. A bloody mess, but not the first or, unfortunately, the last time a woman dies trying to get away from a man wielding a weapon over "lost love."

Like most legends, this one may have been founded on a scrap of historical truth. Thousands of women were, at one time, sent from England to Brittany to help populate their newly conquered territory. But Ursula's story took more of its shape from the Moon Goddess surrounded by thousands of her stars.

(from panel paintings  of St. Ursula by Hans Memling)

Someone posted her story on the blog of that day--a wall inscription on a church in Cologne where some young girls had been killed. Two. Five. Eight. Eleven. The number varies. Like most urban legends and internet stories, the inscription was interpreted in many ways. One account says the girl was named Ursula and she was eleven years old. Another called her Undecimilla. You know how confusing those Roman numerals can be. A monk later translated that as 11,000.

But the exact details don't really matter. The point was women were killed and the goddess Artemis whose temple that had been when people called her Ursel, was replaced by a cathedral hosting thousands of bone relics--dug up from a local burial ground. The little bear rounded the bend.

In Thom Hartmann's new book, Threshold, he points out four of our big mistakes. One of them is "the belief that men should run the world and women are their property."

Ursula's story continues to be played out. She is raped in Darfur. Burned in rural India where it's less trouble than divorce. Murdered if she "dishonors" the male members of family. Beaten, stabbed, shot by men she trusts.

The mystic Elisabeth of Schönau saw Ursula and the girls in a vision she wrote about in Revelations Concerning the Sacred Army of Virgins of Cologne. It was followed by another 13th century collection called The Golden Legend, and then in the 15th century, my favorite: Legends of Hooly Wummen.

Various sailors, no doubt heated by the thought of all those lonely virgins, named far-away places after them. Christopher Columbus happened upon a lot of islands in the Caribbean and called them The Virgin Islands. Ferdinand Magellan, sailing through "his strait" on October 21, 1521, named the cape, Cape Virgenes.

And, of course, in the 12th century, Hildegard of Bingen who kept many of Her stories alive, wrote The Symphonia--a liturgical cycle of 77 poems with monophonic music for her nuns to sing. Unlike Elisabeth who got her visions in dreams, Hildegard claimed she was wide awake. "The words in this vision are not like words uttered by the mouth of man, but like a shimmering flame, or a cloud floating in a clear sky."

A dripping honeycomb was the virgin Ursula, who longed to embrace the lamb of God, milk and honey under her tongue; because  like a fruit-laden garden and splendor of flowers, she gathered a throng of virgins about her...

And...

Blood's crimson Flowing from a height Touched by God.You are a blossom which the winter of the serpent's breath did not harm.

I like to think Hildegard’s songs for Ursula are for all young women everywhere, from every time, who are abused, beaten, bruised, killed, or who die from unwanted pregnancies in childbirth—just because they are female.

In 1506 a brave women named Angela Merici gathered 28 women around her (for those of us intrigued by numbers, that’s the number of the moon—days of a woman’s cycle) and said: "Let’s teach young girls."  It took forty years for the church fathers to sanction what they were doing, but finally The Ursalines became the teaching nuns.  Those She-Bears made and still make a difference.

More and more people are catching on to the fact that when young girls are educated, families become empowered. And whole nations benefit.

Honeycombs drip.

 

Friends of Friends

I just joined Facebook, which raises its demographic age just a bit.

I used to publish books on topics such as "Social Capital" but I still don't know why I joined. Well, I do. A friend invited me to. All I had to be was 13. No problem there.

Social networking started with "Friends" on TV, I believe. But it was hard to get to Boston and then find the right bar, so they did it online.

I looked up "social networks" on Wikipedia and I was nonplussed by how many there are. (I've always wanted to use that word, nonplussed, and I think this is the very first time.)

This is what social networking looks like. I got it from Wikipedia.  I think it's more like Indra's web with nodes hooking people-diamonds. All attached and connected. 

Facebook is larger than several major countries combined, proving that we no longer have geographical boundaries. Just common interests. (You can check out Netwiki if you're interested in the theory and science of all this stuff.)

One study discovered that happiness tends to be correlated to social networks. Makes sense. No one really likes to be alone. And if you're located in that solid blue sector, you're happiest of all, apparently.

As you can see, I lifted this cover image directly from Amazon. But I wanted you to see it. I just got this book yesterday from a friend who is a friend of Craig Barnes, the author. (See, that's really how books get sold. I don't trust "big numbers" sometimes. I suspect books are often bought by groups or even authors themselves who want to inflate a particular title--no names mentioned here but think Alaska and a word that means a stampeding killer elephant.)

Naturally, I love Barmes' cover image and I can't wait to explore its content. It's similar to the figure I once recreated in copper seen here.

Call her what you will. 

Hildegard of Bingen called her Sapientia--The Holy Spirit.

Then creation recognized its Creator in its own forms and appearances.

For in the beginning, when God said, "Let it be!" and it came to pass, the means and the Matrix of creation was Love,

because all creation was formed through Her as in the twinkling of an eye.

Regular readers will know that I call her Sophia.

My friend Ria Baeck lives her emergent feminine by exploring how the collective feminine appears in our lives, our communities and the earth. She's working on a book that will make clear distinctions about how we express our own collective feminine by finding accurate language and marking the steps in our Great Turning--the Big Transition time we find ourselves in right now. It will be about how we are heading towards a next step in the synergy of yin and yang on our way to a life-affirming co-creation.

When Ria's book is published, I'll buy it for friends. And when I do, I'll think of my copper Sophia and how her arms encompass all of us, for she is indeed the Friend of friends.

Rumsfeld, Sophia and Remembering Eden

Do you recall that speech Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once gave when he tried to justify our intelligence (or lack thereof) backing the decision to go into Iraq to get all those elusive weapons of mass destruction? It was that "what we know we know and what we don't know that we don't know" speech.

I had once published "Knowledge Management" books so I thought I knew what he was talking about. At a knowledge conference I had learned we might divide knowledge into "information" and "know how." The knowledge you get from reading memos and books versus what you pick up at the water cooler or over a beer. Explicit and tacit.

Think of all knowledge as falling into this four-part grid:

 

What we know we know.	What we know we don't know.
What we don’t know we know.	What we don’t know that we don’t know.

It's that last quadrant: "What we don't know that we don't know" that's apt to get us into trouble. 

Collective Wisdom

No spoiler alert needed. I won’t be giving anything away to tell you Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol ends with a couple of pages that will most likely never make it into the movie, nor will they cross Tom Hanks’ lips.

Here’s a portion:

“Our physical bodies have evolved over the ages, but it was our minds that were created in the image of God…as soon as we humans begin to harness our true power, we will have enormous control over our world. We will be able to design reality rather than merely react to it…And (Kathryn says) if we as humans can honestly grasp this one simple truth…the world will change overnight…the power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share that thought.”

 Kathryn’s character is based, at least in part, on Lynne McTaggart, the author of The Field and The Intention Experiment.

After reading The Intention Experiment, I was again reminded that, indeed, we ARE all connected and we are now called to really pay attention to our thoughts, our intentions and our actions.

But there is another book I'd like to call your attention to. The Power of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly. I admit I'm partial. It's written by some friends of mine:

Alan Briskin, Sheryl Erickson, John  Ott and Tom Callanan.

 As the title implies, it's more about group wisdom than about our individual attempts at being and acting intelligent. They quote Albert Einstein in their chapter called "Inhabiting a Different Worldview."

“A  human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself [she experiences herself] as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusions of his [her] consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.” [The brackets are mine.]

Now that Carl Jung’s heretofore unpublished Red Book (NYTimes Magazine today,  Sunday 20 September 2009) is about to be published, it’s interesting to read about Jung’s final days on page 83 and 84 of The Power of Collective Wisdom.  The authors tell us that Jung believed ideas lie outside the individual mind but can be discovered and rediscovered from different disciplines and different cultural backgrounds.  They say: “To inhabit a world view of such shared collective knowing, we need to be able to hold in our mind a larger canvas on which to see the cumulative accomplishments of consciousness. We need to understand ourselves as a human species evolving together.”

Together.  Not separately.

At the end, they quote Christopher Alexander: “People are deeply nourished by the process of creating wholeness.”  It is indeed time we come together. That’s their last line.

It IS time we come together. We're wasting precious time being fractured and fractious. Miserable and misery-makers. Angry and anxious. We’re soooo much better than that.

 

Rings of Synchronicities

The author Daniel Pinchback (a Mayan calendar expert) said on public radio the other day that as we near 2012 we will all be experiencing more and more synchronicities. You know, those things that happen that shouldn’t happen because they have nothing to do with cause and effect.

My son Joel and I wrote about them in Hubab Ku in connection with archetypal symbols and the Mayan’s belief in harmonic resonance. Many people have told me that when they open Hunab Ku or Divine Sparks for some sort of inspiration, they are often amazed at how “right” for them at that very moment the page they "accidentally" turned to seems to be.  

Celtic Healing Sounds

Yesterday a new chemical greeted my body. Red, this time, like Cherry Kool-Aid, it  slowly dripped through my IV tube carrying with it all sorts of "drinking the kool-aid" metaphors. It's real name is Doxorubicin Liposomal-affectionately known as doxol.

I leaned back in my infusion recliner thinking about all the dire possible side-effects: mouth, hand and foot sores. My PA put the fear of the Lord in me about them and made me swear on her stack of "Information for Patients Provided by your Health Care Team at Dartmouth- Hitchcock Medical Center" flyers to heed them for the next five days. Nothing over 75 degrees dare pass my lips or touch my skin--and sun? Well forget it! Fortunately rain's in the near forecast. And if it does appear, my sweet family in Colorado sent me a Mother's Day UV protection embedded long sleeved shirt. Images form: Ice tea. Ice coffee. Gazpacho!

Just then "Margaret the Harp Lady," as she refers to  herself, came smiling through the double doors, carrying her Celtic oblation. Margaret Stevens and I are old friends by now so she immediately sat down, cradling her wonderful lever lap harp. No more worrying about mouth sores for me!

Hand-held offering gifts come in many forms. Donah Drewett, another volunteer Reiki friend once teamed up with Margaret and presented me with the holy gift of 15 minutes of bliss. And another pastor-friend, Diane Root wrote me an e mail last night saying she would be holding a prayer-drumming session for me. I thought I could feel the vibrations miles away.

In between bathing me in Bach and washing me with the still waters of "Shenandoah," Margaret and I talked of Iona. We both think it's part of the otherworld. In fact, I read about a legend of St. Oren for whom this chapel is named.Columba, the Irish ex Druid, settled Iona, bringing Christianity to Scotland. Later one of his comrade monks died and was buried where St. Oren's chapel is now. After three days, the monks thought they heard something and dug him up. He was alive and screaming,"The Otherworld is Nothing like you imagined!" Then he collapsed. Being practical monks, they buried him again.

The words of Frank MacEown came back to me. In The Mist-Filled Path: Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers and Seekers he said, "May you taste resurrection without the need of dying for it.  

  Music offers "sound resurrection." Margaret's harp anchored me as surely as if a Celtic cross had been driven through the footrest of my recliner.

How powerful is your magic sound?
~Mozart, The Magic Flute

Music. Muse. Don Campbell who wrote The Mozart Effect—all about tapping into the creative power of music to heal the body and strengthen the mind—says music warms up the brain. I say, “bring it on!” 

But why does Campbell recommend Mozart rather than other music?  All music can be good, when listened to intentionally. But, apparently, Mozart’s and Hayden’s pulses and patterns hit the brain with a clarity and elegance that can improve concentration, memory and spatial perception. Some monks in Brittany monasteries play music to their cows (as do some farmers in Vermont) but the monks claim Mozart gives more milk. Playing Mozart in some Immigration English classes tends to speed up learning. In Edmonton, Canada, Mozart’s string quartets have been proven to calm pedestrian traffic an reduce drug deals. And in Japan, the Ohara Brewery finds that Mozart makes the best sake—something about the density of yeast!

On p. 79 he shows how other kinds of music affects us. Interesting stuff!

I don't know about cows or yeast; I can only speak to Margaret's music. I had been sitting there thinking about how my new red “Kool Aid” might be affecting me in a couple of days.  Possible mouth sores and pressure point problems so I shouldn't put put my elbows on the table. Hmmm. They didn't say anything about fingers on the keyboard. I know, even if I could, I wouldn't be able to play the harp!

I kept watching the blood-red drips. And then everything shifted with Margaret's arrival.  My stress melted down, deep down through my cushy chair, through the floor, into the ground. And that feeling is still with me as I write this morning. Music IS powerful! And there’s something about Celtic music paired with prayer that is perhaps most powerful of all.

In The Book of Love Kathleen McGowan took some liberties with St. Patrick’s famous prayer. They fit so beautifully with Margaret’s Celtic harp music:

God’s hand to guard on me
God’s wisdom to guide me
God’s ear to hear me.
God’s eye to look before me
God’s might to uphold me
God’s word to speak through me.
God’s love to sustain me,
God’s shield to protect me.

May it be so.

From Bakelite to Being Light

Every Saturday morning, I held my little beige Motorola in my eight year old lap and my inner world magically connected to the world beyond Sand Creek, Wisconsin.

I plunked "froggie with its magic twinger" with Buster Brown and his Dog Tige. I can hear, still, Ramar of the Jungle's elephant! I flew with Sky King and the Royal Mounties and I traveled with Uncle Ted to the land of  “Let’s Pretend.” 

My mother usually allowed me to take a few slices of sausage and some crackers into the onto the living room sofa with me

and I stacked them on top of the radio which automatically heated them up. Heating and seeping early plastic into food now seems like a very dangerous past time. Good thing I did it just once a week. I savored every sound and saved every crumb.

Circles of Wisdom

Rilke said, "There is nothing so wise as a circle." Click here to read my latest word-weavings about how I became a part of three women's circles. It ends with a poem to Sophia. See you there.