March 2025 (Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3)
Dear Friends ~ My window looks over the neighbors' rooftops to the poplars, box elders, oaks, pines of the woods that rim our village. The morning is gray, slashed with bitter rain. The harsh winds of a March storm toss the tree limbs hither and yon. Their tender buds must be clinging with all their tiny might. The chaotic flailing mirrors these times and the thrashing of both culture and nature. It feels, it is, dire. But the storm is not everything. Though the gusts swirl mightily, there is within each of us a holy flame that steadfastly illumines our belonging to the living world, our place in a vast and tenacious communion of all that is Holy. In this mothering warmth, we are each wrapped in the loving embrace of the Divine. Here we find Sophia, Holy Wisdom, in which to steady ourselves against the storm. Sophia is being called forth by our collective longing, by our gathered yearning, by what we have carried in our bones all along.
Beloved Earth, ancient dreamer, keeper of bones and stories—
We, breath in your body, stardust in your veins,
Come before you with hearts both broken and burning.
In this time of the Great Turning,
When despair and possibility dance in the same holy darkness—
May we offer ourselves as imaginal cells in your metamorphosis...
May we be scattered like spores,
Each carrying a fraction of the future,
Each vital, each necessary, each aflame
With particular purpose...
May our courage rise to match the magnitude of these times.
In every moment,
in every event of your life
Wisdom
is whispering to you
exactly what you need to hear and know.
Who can ever explain this miracle?
It simply is.
Listen
and you will discover it
every passing moment.
Listen
and your whole life
will become a conversation
in thought and act between you and
Wisdom,
directly,
wordlessly,
now,
and always.
Divine Sophia defies the supremacy of linear logic and rational analysis, she rejects the pyramid of hierarchical dualism by resisting our dichotomies....and withstanding the compartmentalized, objective mind-set to which we have been educated. In a word, Wisdom undermines the need to control life.
...when Divine Sophia, the Beloved, the Word "awakens"...then absolutely everyone and everything in the universe is experienced as indissolubly and harmoniously interconnected and part of an emerging Mystery that binds everything together.
As you ring, what batters you
becomes your strength
You are our Companion and Friend...
I accompany those who love You,
that I may grow in wisdom;
I enter into the Silence, into the
Eternal Light,
and listen for your gentle Voice.
At the mystical heart of each of the Abrahamic faiths lie teachings about the transformation power of fire and the identification of the Holy One with light. In Judaism, the Shekinah—the indwelling feminine presence of God—took the form of a pillar of fire at night to lead the Israelites through the desert. ....May we let ourselves down into the arms of fire and allow it to melt the armor of our hearts. The excruciating fire of our loneliness and our fear of intimacy. The sweet fire of our longing for union with the Beloved. The purifying fire of radical unknowingness, which all the great mystics assure us is the beginning of knowing God.
let there come silence.
Let there be a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim on you,
that have made their home in you,
that go with you
even to the holy places
but will not
let you rest....
Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath the chaos,
where you find the peace
you did not think possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.