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]

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.

 

Great Gratitude

See all those apples on the ground? And the ones still hanging on the tree? This is my new visual image for "abundance."

Our four backyard apple trees have, up to now, produced primarily hard little green wormy Thanksgiving meals for the deer. We enjoy the blossoms in May but we usually buy our apples from growers who know what they’re doing. My husband and I admit we’re “orchard-challenged.” We wouldn't know a pruning hook from a button hook. But this year, for some reason, we have more apples than we have pie plates. We look out our window and say, OMG!

Ohhh!--An exhalation of seeing something as if for the first time.

My!—This is all ours!

God!—of course this all came from That Wonderful Source of ALL whom I call the Divine Feminine. Sophia. We certainy weren't responsible. We didn’t call in the bees to fertilize the blossoms. We didn’t create the rain at just the right time. And the sun comes up each morning with no help from us.

In the "Great Gratitude" department, besides Sophia, I'd like to list:

Roads: Of the 500 miles of roads and 200 bridges destroyed by Tropical Storm Irene, only two bridges and 9 miles of state road are left to be repaired. That, of course, doesn't mean ALL our roads are back to normal, but it does mean that people have worked so very hard over the past two months to accomplish this Herculean feat. And our creative Congressman Peter Welsch put together an "Irene Coalition" of Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives to help pay for the repairs. It's a template for how future bills might be created--together!

Food. What's better than sweet sweet potatoes and flakey pie crust? AND all those apples.

Clothes: I found a new scarf at our local thrift shop yesterday in "My Colors!" I love it.

Filmmakers: To all the filmmakers who bring images to life with such care and awe. Louie Schwartzberg, case in point. Check out his TED Talk on You Tube. He shows us a connection to the universe that truly celebrates life. He says "beauty and seduction are nature's tools--we fall in love with what we find beautiful."

Doctors and nurses and all the other medical staff: I'm going on my ninth year after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer and I wouldn't be here at my computer, writing this if it weren't for them.

Family: Spending time with our four year old granddaughter recently was a slice of heaven. Here she is with the man I am most thankful for in the whole world:

And you: My friends who take the time to read this blog. To you who send me wonderful images from time to time. To you who take the time to comment. To you who share books and ideas with me. To all or you who make my life worth living, my Great Gratitude!

 

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.

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.

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!

 

 

"If I Ran the World"

No one ever asked me what I'd do if I ran the world...until Shelly Rachanow interviewed me about The Green Devotional. Shelly has written two books celebrating the wonderful things women do. You go, Shelly! Her blog features women around the world who are making a difference in their part of the planet. Her home page carries Anne Frank's quote: "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."  I'm humbled to be included in such company.

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. 

Mad as a Hatter

I’ve become a hatter in my spare time. A Green Hatter. A Sophia-Hatter. Not really a Mad Hatter since I don’t use mercury in any of my hats as they did in 19th century hat making. People who wear my hats don’t suffer from mercury poisoning and wide mood swings as they did back then. At least, not that I know of. 

    

Like quilters who make quilts from bits  and pieces, I’m a hatter who does the same thing. All of my hand-stitched hats are made from recycled wool (which I wash in really really hot water hoping to “felt” it up.)  Most are “blinged up” with beads or buttons for women, some for children and a few for men. I love hearing friends say, "Oh, that's my sweater!"

"T" People and Bird Houses

While most families get together on holidays to grill, drink beer, watch ballgames, snipe at each other and dredge up past grievances, our niece and her family sat down in the back yard to play with scraps of wood and bits of found treasures. The French word for this is bricolage--play with what's at hand.

Sophia, so aptly named for this blog, the youngest member of the family, lounged with the dog while all the adults made birdhouses.  Some more fanciful than others.

I wanted to share this birdhouse with you because I believe it’s a metaphor for what ...here he comes again...Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the transcendent self.  The “T” people. Imagine a family so creative, so loving, so thoughtful as to surround little Sophie with these concrete examples of complexity. Yes, complexity.

"Bee-ing" There

The other night a bear broke through the barbed wire surrounding their hives and ate 30 pounds of our friend’s honey.  As that winter-starved “Pooh” scooped up all that golden goodness, he probably didn’t pause to ponder how all that “hunny” would improve his immune system, kill any harmful bacteria and promote healthy tissue growth. When he had had his fill, he turned his sticky snout toward the bird feeders.

Some people see sacred geometry in bee work. Each cell is an exact 60˚hexagon perfectly positioned. Like snowflakes and Stars  of David. When we burn candles made of bees wax, we may, as people long before us did, sense something cosmic melting. The bees have shared with us, as Sue Monk Kidd put it, a portion of their secret life.

Icons for the Ears

In April 27th’s  New Yorker, Elif Batuman tells in “The Bells” (ohhh I hear an internal rhyme) how people in the Russian Orthodox faith believe bells are “aural icons” not mere musical instruments. In fact, Russian bells sound, as Father Roman, a famous bell ringer, put it, “deep, sonorous and clear, for how can the voice of God be otherwise?” 

    

Big Ben weighs 13 tons but one in Russia called Tsar Kolokol actually weighed in at 200 tons!

Batuman tells the fascinating story of how eighteen Dailov monastery bells (from 22 pounds to thirteen tons) made it to a tower in Lowell House in Harvard Square in 1930 and how, after 78 years, they were returned to Russia last September. Thanks to a generous philanthropist, Harvard got a new set so they can still ring out victories against Yale games.

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.

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.