Sophia Serve

Hummingbirds and Nazca Lines

I thought of this image we included in Hunab Ku as I listened to Maya Lin on NPR the other day. You may remember her for the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. which she designed as a 21 year old Yale student.

Maya was talking about her latest memorial : What Is Missing?, a multi-sited work incorporating video and sounds of birds and animals now threatened. She builds her art on facts and we can emotionally draw from those facts what we care to take away.

One in three amphibians, one in four mammals and one in eight birds is now threatened and in danger of forever dying because of habitat loss. (And 70% of our plants!)

The Nazca story is a compelling one and a sophiaserve reader recently sent me an update that may interest you as much as it interests me.

Handing off the Future

       I went to an organizational learning workshop a few years back led by John Dicus. At onepoint, John asked us to contemplate the question: “What do I need to steward my own future?" 

John passed around a  little crystal ball so we could “gaze into it” and see what came to us. Doubting (as I often do) the efficacy of these sorts of exercises, I sat there waiting for the ball to come my way. When I felt the cool weight of it in my left palm, I dutifully repeated the question to myself, and looked down. All I could see was my left hand. Then it hit me. Of course! My future depends on how I use my hands!

Since that exercise, I've left corporate publishing and have spent a great deal of time at the keyboard writing and helping others write--a "handy exercise." Two books will publish late this year/early next and over the past couple of days I've been handling the page proofs for both, thinking about the various hands I hope will soon hold a bound copy. One of the books, The Green Devotional, leads me ask: "What will we hand off to our children and grandchildren?" The book carries many messages of planetary plight as well as global hope.

And what did our ancestors hand off to us? I mean the ones way, way, way back.

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.  

On Wings of Fire

Rising up out of its own ashes, every 500 years or so, the legendary phoenix imprints us with hope. It's a cross-cultural symbol for resurrection. Turkish texts claim the phoenix bears these words on its wings:

"Neither the earth produces me, nor the heavens, but only the wings of fire."

Chinese sources say the feng-huang originates in the sun and calls up the sun every morning with its perfect five-toned melody.

Now, as many Iranians face their own "flaming challenges," and each of us rises daily out of yesterday's "ashes," the phoenix points the way to our future days that can be scented, as its own nest is said to be, with frankincense, cinnamon and myrrh. May it be so!

From Hesiod to Harry Potter, the phoenix carries hope on its flaming wings. Suddenly one has appeared as a crop circle as well.

Photo by Oliver Morel

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.