Sophia Serve

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

 

 

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.