Sophia Serve

Patterns and Metapatterns

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]

Soup Mantra for 2012

After several days in Barcelona, steeped in Antoni Gaudi’s colorful swirling architecture, including the extra-terrestrial spired  Sagrada Familia cathedral, the fairy-taled magical Park Güell, 

    

 

the Pedrera, an apartment building with no straight lines and a roof that offers the most amazing views of the city, and, of course, Casa Batilló’s dragon chimney, the more down to earth 1950’s Casa el Cherro invited us in to enjoy yet another face of Spain. 

We’d driven west along the Mediterranean coast toward Malaga for hours and the prospect of walking a few blocks to dinner, even past several abandoned store fronts laced with graffiti, was very inviting. Our stomachs demanded more than chocolate pastries and juicy oranges, as wonderful as they were. 

Casa el Cherro proved to be an intimate combination neighborhood deli, tapas bar, restaurant, taverna and meat market. I’d recommend it to you if I could describe how we actually found it in Murcia after navigating several roundabouts through narrow streets.

I don’t totally understand the Catalonian penchant for hanging dried Iberian “black” hams everywhere from roadside fast food cafeteria ceilings to  fancier eating establishments. But, by the time I entered Casa el Cherro’s, the long legged Jamon, like pork stalactites precariously swinging over my head, no longer surprised me. If my Spanish had been better, I could have read what was written on the little inverted plastic pyramids attached to their bottoms. Perhaps it quoted Animal Farm: some pigs may be more equal than others. Or these inverted funnels may have been designed to simply catch stray drips. I had over the course of the past several days quietly watched these wrapped and netted salty legs, but never caught a drip in the act. Unlike our plumped-up fatty, rounder hams, the need for drip-catching seemed unnecessary. These porkers had taken on more of the dense aura of beef jerky. But I wondered, what sort of pigs had legs like these? Obviously taller and skinnier than any I have ever known.

Our congenial host ushered us to a table away from still other rows of hanging meats and with a soft, ironed white linen napkin with a discreetly woven "Casa el Cherro" safely tucked in my lap, I pretended to read the menu. No pictures. No alternative English explanations. Every now and then a white-aproned grandfatherly or elderly uncle figure appeared from what must be the kitchen back there just behind a lighted curio cabinet sporting a glass-enclosed…you guessed it…super-huge pig leg.

In my halting Spanish, I asked what was the soup. Caliente, I hoped. Si. What’s in it?

“It is what it is.”  That’s what he said. I ordered it and I loved it, although I did share little hunks of what I determined was liver, to my liver-loving husband. 

So that’s how I got my new soup-mantra. And I feel it will apply to anything 2012 dishes up. I’ll look at it, recognize a few floating bits, be curious about what else lurks below the surface, but I’ll calmly enjoy it because… “It is what it is.”

 

Sacred Space

When I think of sacred places this time of year a stable and manger come to mind. Or the little white Lutheran country church where I was baptized, confirmed and later married.  It's gone now--all except the cemetery and the old hand pump, left, I suppose, so people can water plants.

Or  I think of my labyrinth. And if I raise my sacred sights a bit, I think of Chartres Cathedral or Istanbul's Hagia Sophia.  Mayan temples, Jerusalem,  Mecca.

But I hadn't thought my refrigerator was. Until, that is, a web acquaintance of mine named Anthony Lawlor broadened my mind and my definition of sacred space. I just finished cleaning out our refrigerator, throwing away all those wonderful tidbits from several weeks ago that I couldn't bear to part with back then and as I scraped hardened bits of something orange and gooey, I thought, "Anthony would approve."

Anthony, an architect,  has written several books about the soulfulness of everyday architecture. In A Home for the Soul he says "the most immediate way of deepening soulfulness in a home is through cleaning and repair." He makes a connection I had not: the word cleaning has a spiritual connotation. The roots of that word suggest a ceremonial anointing with oil.  Mary Magdalene's cleaning Jesus' feet with expensive oil comes to mind. That act was done with great intention. You can't clean if you don't slow down. My husband vaccuums.  Slowly. And he pays attention. Slowing down and paying attention are also meditative tools.

As I scrubbed bits and pieces off my glass refrigerator shelves and threw out jars of who knows what, I went a bit Zen and decided to just clean while I cleaned. That was all. I turned off the radio's latest political wranglings and wrung out a warm sudsy cloth. Many times. Back and forth. Slowly, the way Indian women wash the steps of a ghat.  Or the way Dutch women used to scrub their thresholds.

The kitchen is the core of any home. The refrigerator and stove cool and heat, like alchemy. Fairy tales tell of stoves with a hidden meaning of burning away everything that is no longer needed.  I wouldn't go so far as to say my soul is purified every time I turn my gas burner to "On" but it's something to think about. 

A home has character and personality. But until we put our own stamp on a place, it could be a Holiday Inn room somewhere. You can shower and rest there, but it's not yours. And I have yet to enter a motel room that feels soul-full.

I belong to a group of women who meet monthly in each other's homes.  Each home carries the soul-prints of the people who live there. Like tracks in the snow, our books, lamps,  furniture,  textures, colors, valued pieces sitting here and there or hanging on the walls all mark our passage through this space. They say, "This is who I am. This is a peek into my soul."

This season and throughout the new year, may you find and truly care for those  sacred spaces where your soul thrives.

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.

It's Watching You

Its silhouette is one of the most recognizable in the world. Floating there, surrounded by water and sheep-grazed salt flats, Mt. Tombe, as the founding monk Aubert called it back in the 8th century, still beckons pilgrims of every ilk. Three million every year.

What is it about this Norman village/castle/church that draws us to such a remote place perched in the sea between Brittany and Normandy? Perhaps it's the gold steepled statue of the Archangel Michael who watches over everyone. Perhaps it's the challenge of the climb. According to a friend's pedometer, it took 2,102 steps up the inner staricase to get to the upper cloisters and back.

Working our way through labyrinthine crypts, past ramparts, flying buttresses and pillars, we marveled at the gigantic wheeled winch that defied stones' gravity and brought building supplies up so precariously high. We breathed in the mystic air of this place once called by the Celts, Ynys Trebes. We paused in the scriptorium where monks once copied and illuminated manuscripts. Forty-two people presently live full time on the rock--merchants, prayers, chanters, administrators.

You enter Mt. St. Michel through the King's Gate and suddenly you're in a world apart. A stony world once home to Benedictines and then to prisoners during the French Revolution. And to miracles, some say.

Fritjof Capra's brother Bernt took his brother's Turning Point and made it into a movie called Mind Walk. At one point one of three people who accidentally meet there says, "You can feel the place watching you."

Indeed, you can.

I picked up a copy of a little prayer book in the bookstore. One strikes me as appropriate to our time, to our journey:

Here I am, watching and waiting.

With time to look at things.

With time to admire what I see.

Days to discover things,

days to enjoy

Life to the full.

Time to chew the cud,

to savor the good life.

 

 

Reproduced Authenticity

The Loire, at 500 miles, is the longest river in France and below it in the south-central Languedoc region we discovered  Cathar-country. They called themselves Good Christians—as opposed, one assumes from the others, led by the pope and his men who were killing them in the 11^th and 12^th centuries faster than you can say "heretic." The double-moated city of Carcassonne (if you wish to come close to the French pronunciation try CAK a SOWN), Toulousse, Albi—all were places where once “spiritual authenticity” was debated in the most deadly manner.

But today, peaceful plane trees line the long Canal du Midi and the only “battles” over authenticity seem to be what legitimately can carry the “AOC” label which means this product is authentically produced here. And don’t look for genetically modified food (which must be labeled) on any super market shelves.

Today you can’t go to the Perigord without running into geese and “AOC” foies-gras, specific regional wines and authentically registered cheeses which come from very geographically particular cows. Well over half of France is farmland even though only six per cent of the French call themselves farmers. Our expert bus driver, Lauren, drove us over narrow roads past fields of grapes, tobacco and sunflowers, into the forested Dordogne Valley. We passed under limestone cliffs where the Cro-Magnon people once lived. Cave in French means wine cellars and sometimes the caves as well as restaurants were in real caves which also contain houses of modern day “troglodytes.”

But no one ever lived in the sacred grotte we were about to visit. By late morning we meandered through the village of Montignac and several kilometers out into the woods to enter an underground nave called Lascaux II. The “authentic” Lascaux I was closed in 1962 when it became apparent a green virus from microbes brought in by tourists’ shoes and a corrosive white dot build up from carbon dioxide was destroying the ancient art. Like all other prehistoric painted caves in France Lascaux I is now only open to scholars and researchers.

My lungs gulped misty autumn air carrying hints of juniper as we climbed the path leading to the most exquisite museum of art I could ever imagine. The original cave was discovered by four teenaged boys and their dog Robot on another fall day in 1940. One of the boys, Jacques Marsal, described a “cavalcade of animals larger than life painted on the walls and ceiling of the cave; each animal seemed to be moving.” The paintings were brilliantly multicolored in reds, blacks, browns and ochres. The boys were standing in what is now called The Hall of the Bulls. They vowed to keep it a secret. That lasted two days.

A Stony Place

Early this morning, I look out over our misty hills across trees veiled in soft light and mouth the words of a favorite Celtic prayer:

God bless to me the new day

Never vouched safe to me before

Bless thou to me mine eye

May mine eye bless all it sees

Spring in Vermont reminds me of one April in Ireland, visiting ancient sites with our older son.
We had driven through miles of gorse and grass only to find ourselves on a promontory south of Galway Bay called An Boirenn. The Burren, aptly named, means "A stony place." It's cushioned on one side by Kerry and on the other by the purple Connemara mountains. We both said, "We're on the moon!"

As my husband would readily tell you, I collect stones from places I visit. So, yes, I picked up a rock from this bare and lonely ten mile long, ten mile wide Ireland. Nature carved my bit of the Burren's austere limestone landscape with angular "clints" and "grykes." Ice once sheeted this western corner of the Emerald Isle and left it all looking like an over-sized unreclaimed terraced mining site. It's where much of the gold and silver that formed their intricately patterned brooches and torcs came from. The terrain is pocked with shafts and caves from all that smashing, hammering and melting.

The people who once lived here among  the numerous stone forts and galley graves followed Brehon law--not the laws of the English which later became our own.

People were paid for their labors in flax and wool, in weighed-out silver, and in milk cows. A "set" of treasure was valued as half an ounce of silver and one milk cow equaled one ounce of silver. They clearly defined who should and who should not be given loans. They couldn't have imagined a time when people put their treasure in misty derivatives and futures.

They called legal seven kinds of marriages and didn't waste their time disputing loving unions.

They fined people who committed crimes and paid honor prices to those injured; they had no need for prisons. If harm of any kind was caused--a fine was paid.

They held their judges to very high standards--judges who spent decades studying law. They believed  three things can cause a kingdom's ruin: a judge who takes bribes, an unlearned judge and an unjust judge.

They believed someone who steals a needle from a poor embroidery woman had to pay a higher fine than it if it had been a queen's needle that was stolen.

And, most importantly, perhaps, they believed words matter. Even satire. Words can maim. The penalty for unjust satire or mockery was equivalent of a person's honor price. It was as if that person had been killed.

It 's obvious they weren't burdened by greedy lobby groups, hate media, or fear-mongering.

The sun was going down and we were still driving around The Burren looking for a particular dolmen. When we found it, we paused for a few quiet moments to bless the people who once lived so very carefully on this austere land.

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.

 

 

 

 

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.