With One Accord: Wisdom

With One Accord

Wisdom Volume Three, Issue 1

Winter 2022

CONTENTS EDITORIAL Lucinda M. Vardey WISDOM IN THE BIBLE William Irwin, CSB JESUS-SOPHIA Elisabeth A. Johnson WHAT IS SOPHIOLOGY? Barbara Hallensleben SOPHIA IN EXILE The Magdala Interview: Gregory Rupik with Michael Martin THE SCIENCE OF SOPHIA: A REFULGENCE OF ETERNAL LIGHT Elinor Dickson AWAKENING: THOMAS MERTON AND SOPHIA Lucinda M. Vardey

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Editorial Russian philosophers/theologians Sergej Bulgakov, Pavel Florenskij and Paul Evdokimov were the few to greatly influence the development of ideas that would compose the features in the study of wisdom we call sophiology. In this issue Barbara Hallensleben illustrates how we recognize and engage in sophiology today. As Michael Martin explains in his book, Sophia in Exile, we are predominantly absent from what is real, that, assuming a life of utility, we lose the ability to be enchanted by the beauty of wisdom’s reality.

Our exploration begins with the wisdom books of the Bible.

William Irwin CSB provides us with a clear and comprehensive overview of these books and what they reveal. Elizabeth Johnson relates much of the biblical wisdom figures to Jesus’ incarnation and mission. Michael Martin in the Magdala interview shares how working on the land participates in a wisdom relationship and how the arts, particularly poetry, is a form in which Sophia is brought to life. Elinor Dickson, who had collaborated with Jungian Marion Woodman on Sophia’s presence in our times, proposes physics as a means of understanding. During the latter years of Thomas Merton’s life he ventured further into studying Sophia, not only from reading the Russians but from his own contemplative intuitions and subsequent experiences, that re-enforce Barbara Hallensleben’s insight that we can choose love and the influences of God over the influences of worldly power and persuasion. “Truth is intuition that is provable” wrote Florenskij.

Sergej Bulgakov claimed that Sophia is revealed in the organic principle. Without going extensively into what he understood of that principle, the articles in this issue form common threads that weave an organic way of engagement with wisdom. The Gospels reveal to us how Jesus taught the organic; his movements and actions were dictated by the Spirit, he knew where he was to go and what he was to do. “Come follow me” is an organic method of the moment, of the natural order of God’s will devoid of self-imposed plans, desires, social activities or family obligations. A fluidity, a flow, a flexibility in accordance with the natural elements, the seasons, the very “breath” of the Spirit. A slowing down, a turning to simplicity, becoming conscious of what is around. Doing one thing at a time with heart imbues it with meaning—even the so-called insignificant things can become precious. Being receptive, open to God’s grace without any effort on our part is one lesson from the ‘lily in the field.’ Another is to be aware of one’s interior state and what truth is being birthed within. Dutch diarist Etty Hillesum felt “an organic process” at work within her, “something in me is growing and every time I look inside something fresh has appeared, and all I have to do is to accept it, so take it upon myself, to bear it forward and let it flourish.”

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“If we are to be fully ourselves” wrote Jesuit scientist, Pierre Theilhard de Chardin in his book On Happiness, ”we must therefore work all our lives at our organic development by which I mean that we must constantly introduce more order and more unity into our ideas, our feelings and our behaviour.”

Lucinda M. Vardey Editor

“Sophia unites God with the world as the one common principle, the divine ground of creaturely existence.”

Michael Martin

(The Submerged Reality)

William Irwin, CSB is a Basilian Father, a native of

Houston, Texas, and resident of Canada. He studied in Rome and Jerusalem specializing in the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, and a few books preserved in Greek that Christians call The Old Testament. For over forty years he taught Biblical Studies at the University of St. Michael’s College and the Toronto School of Theology.

Wisdom in the Bible William Irwin, CSB The word wisdom in Hebrew (hokmah) and in Greek (sophia) is feminine gender. Wisdom is a “she” as are many abstracts in these languages. But grammatical gender is latent metaphor and has produced several remarkable portraits of Wisdom, the heavenly woman who is the firstborn daughter of God. Although wisdom is feminine gender in Hebrew, it is usually embodied in both men and women. Solomon, for example, is the wisest monarch there ever was. It remained for the book of Proverbs to paint a picture of Wisdom as a heavenly being. It says it is a collection of the wise sayings of Solomon, two collections to be precise, with other smaller collections of the wise sayings of other sages. Though it takes the form of parents teaching their children, it focuses on their lives as adults. God is the authority behind the teaching of parents and the wisdom of God. You hear Wisdom’s voice early on:Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she says: “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?” (Prov 1:20-22).

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She sounds like a street preacher or a school marm of the old West ringing the bell for her school. She calls to the simple, the scoffers and the fools and asks them to abandon their ways and learn wisdom. Her speech goes on until the end of chapter one. It is mainly a warning of what will happen to them if they don’t have wisdom by their side. In the first nine chapters of Proverbs it is sometimes difficult to tell whether the teacher’s voice we hear is that of the parents or of Wisdom herself. They, however, carry the same message.

THE ORIGIN OF WISDOM AT CREATION In chapter 3 Proverbs makes a traditional statement:By wisdom the Lord laid the earth’s foundation; by understanding he set up the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps gushed out, and the clouds drop down dew (Prov 3:19-20).

But in Proverbs 8:22-31 that traditional statement takes on a life of its own when Wisdom says:The Lord created me first before all his works of old. I was brought into being ages ago before the earth. There were no oceans, no springs brimming with water when I was born, no mountains planted or hills when I was born.

He hadn’t made earth with its fields and their soil. When he established the heavens I was there. When he drew a circle over the ocean’s surface, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the ocean’s fountains, when he set a limit to the sea so the ocean would not go beyond his command, when he hewed the foundations of the earth, I was there beside him, the Master Builder.1 I was a delight every day, playing before him constantly, playing in the world he loved,2 and my delight was the human race.”

There is some uncertainty about whether Wisdom calls herself the master builder or God. But if God made the world, God should be the Master Builder, and if God made it with Wisdom she was there with God. It is the emphasis on Wisdom’s playfulness that is striking; cf. Ps 104:26, “Leviathan that you made to play with,” or “Leviathan that you made to play in it, i.e., the ocean.” She was God’s firstborn and at the side of the Master Builder, she found the world God made a delight in every particular but especially in the human race. It was as though she watched delighted, while God was building her a doll’s house and what pleased her most was playing with the human race. So her attitude towards them was of a child for her favourite playthings. We speak of the play of reason or the play of thought and imagine it a very Greek concept but it is also in the psalms. Psalm 19 says:__________ 1 The Master Builder. ‫ ןומא‬II, BDB. With Dahood, in apposition to the suffix of ‫ ולצא‬and referring to God. 2 ‫ וצרא‬The world he loved. Lit. “the world of his good pleasure,” deriving but from ‫ הצר‬with prothetic aleph.

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The heavens speak the glory of God, and the sky proclaims his handiwork.

Day talks to day, and night speaks intelligently to night. They speak no words; no sound is heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world (Ps 19:1-4).

Wisdom can teach because she has firsthand knowledge of everything in the created world.

That was God’s argument against Job’s complaint. “Where were you when I made the world?”

(Job 38:4).

WISDOM’S HOUSE AND THE HOUSE OF FOLLY To build a house was very important in the Bible—not just as a residence but a family. Proverbs 14:1 says, “The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish tears it down with her own hands.” Proverbs 31 shows in detail how the “capable woman” builds her house. She built it with seven pillars according to Proverbs 9.3 And she invites the simple and gullible, i. e. those who do not yet know her but are willing to learn, to dine there. She knows scoffers and fools will simply reject her invitation. Her banquet is a banquet that leads to life. To understand this variation on the metaphor, we have to realize that it’s only part of a metaphor of two houses. Wisdom has a rival, Foolishness the Woman. Earlier in Proverbs she is not an abstraction. She is simply the “foreign woman,” either the non-Israelite that the Law had warned against and had been wise to Solomon’s downfall, or the “stranger woman,” the woman living on her own without known family, or the woman estranged from and cheating on her husband. Proverbs 1-9 warn of two major temptations of the young adult: a life of crime and a life of licentiousness.

SIRACH: WISDOM AT CREATION The book of Sirach was written around 175 BC or about three or four centuries after Proverbs was finished. Sirach 24 will build on Proverb 8’s description of the role of the Woman Wisdom in creation. “He created me first before the ages, and I shall not cease to be for all the ages” (Sir 24:9). But Sirach adds something. According to Proverbs Wisdom’s delight was to be with the human race and according to Sirach:Over the sea’s waves, over the whole earth, and over every people and nation I held sway. Among all these I sought a home; in whose territory should I abide? Then the Creator of all things gave me a command, and my Creator chose the place for my tent. He said, “Make your dwelling in Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance” (Sir 24:6-8). _________ 3 Later reflection including in particular the Islamist, tries to name the seven principles upon which wisdom is built. The Bible does not explain. Some have thought it refers to the way Proverbs or Proverbs 1-9 is constructed.

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Wisdom made her home in Israel. Sirach gives examples of what he means. The book of the Law is an embodiment of wisdom. The scribe who devotes his life to studying that Law and to the pursuit of wisdom, and who teaches and praises God, is inspired by wisdom. Finally, it is all the holy people in Israel’s history culminating in the high priest, Simon, who, in one way or another, are wisdom’s children. In speaking of the embodiments of wisdom, Sirach was in the biblical tradition which saw Solomon as the embodiment of the wise ruler. In Sirach’s eyes Wisdom becomes almost like a Greek muse.

WISDOM AS LOVER Another feature of Sirach’s use of the personification of Wisdom as a Woman is to introduce a certain intimacy into the relation of individuals to God. He describes her as a woman being courted by her suitors. It also permits him to explain the trials of life in a personal way as the development of a friendly relation with God. In Sirach 4:12, he begins traditionally enough by saying how important it is to pursue Wisdom constantly and always to be faithful to her.

WISDOM AS SPIRIT The book of Wisdom, or the Wisdom of Solomon, makes much more use of Greek philosophy.

It puts together three biblical concepts, the spirit of God, the word of God and wisdom, who is pervasive and everywhere. In Wisdom 7 Solomon speaks:“Wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me . . . for in her there is a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible,” and he goes on to list all the qualities of spirit even saying that “she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness” (Wis 7:25-26).

She is also the word through whom God made the universe, the λογος. In Greek λογος doesn’t mean “word” as we use it. It means speech and mental discourse, reasoning. So the author of Wisdom translates the playfulness of Wisdom in Proverbs into the play of the mind reflected in the works of creation. Wisdom is even the One of Greek philosophy. Many translations will say, “though she is but one she can do all things,” but this shows a misunderstanding of Greek philosophy. It should be rendered, “Because she is one, she can do all things.”

WISDOM AS SAVIOUR The second great innovation the book of Wisdom introduces into the personification of Wisdom as Woman, is to give her the major role in salvation history. Like the goddess, Isis, Wisdom is Saviour. This is one of the most remarkable moments in biblical history. At the end of Solomon’s prayer for wisdom during which he sings the praises of wisdom, he says “And thus were the paths of those on earth set right, and people were taught what pleases you, and were saved by wisdom.” I say remarkable because it is the moment when salvation

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history became an object of wisdom. The earlier wisdom authors of the Bible never spoke of Israel or its history. Sirach began to make history an object of wisdom but it was in terms of hagiography: “let us praise the famous in their generations.” But now the history of Israel, with its saving God, is brought fully into wisdom and the wisdom of God.

THE EMBODIMENTS OF WISDOM Apart from Solomon, and the scribes and priests who Sirach proposes to be the models of a life of wisdom, there are also embodiments of wisdom among women— for example Deborah, the judge and prophet, and Esther and Judith. Judith in one of the latest books of the Old Testament is presented as a model of wisdom. She is a religious teacher of great wisdom and eloquence who leads the people in their thinking about what to do in their crisis.

Then there is the woman of Proverbs 31:10-31. She is not called “wise” but “capable” and is presented as the “good wife.” Her wisdom is only referred to explicitly in Prov. 31:26, “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” Women find this portrayal restrictive in the sense that it says this is the ideal life that all women should aspire to, being a good wife and mother. But finding an “able woman/wife” literally means in Hebrew someone who is good at their job, that has the wisdom to do a good job.

Wisdom, then, in the bible, is portrayed in the feminine gender as a heavenly being, a teacher, darling of Master Builder, friend to the human race, lover, spirit and saviour, who invites an embodied relationship with her and her attributes.

Elizabeth A. Johnson CSJ is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Theology

at Fordham University in New York. Former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the American Theological Society, she has received fifteen honorary doctorates. She serves on the editorial boards of four theological journals and her many books, translated into thirteen languages, include “She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse “(Crossroad 1992); “Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (Continuum 2003) and “The Strength of Her Witness: Jesus Christ in Women’s Global Voices” (Orbis 2016). The following is an excerpt from “She Who Is.” It is reprinted by arrangement with The Crossroad Publishing Company. © Elizabeth A. Johnson. www.crossroadpublishing.com

Jesus-Sophia Elizabeth A. Johnson CSJ Christ the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24).

Using the female figure of personified Wisdom, so influential in biblical Christology to speak about Jesus the Christ, offers an augmented field of metaphors with which to interpret his saving significance and rootedness in God in ways that relieve the monopoly of male images of Logos and Son. In wisdom categories we can say that Sophia’s intimate solidarity

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with the unoriginate God and her equally compassionate, life-giving solidarity with human beings whom she makes into friends of God are embodied in Jesus-Sophia, whose person is constituted by these two fundamental relations. Such a way of speaking breaks through the assumption that there is a “necessary ontological connection” between the male human being Jesus and a male God. This leads to the realization that as Sophia incarnate Jesus, even in his human maleness, can be thought to be revelatory of the graciousness of God imaged as female. Likewise, divine Sophia incarnate in Jesus addresses all persons in her call to be friends of God, and can be truly represented by any human being called in her Spirit, women as well as men Not incidentally, the typical stereotypes of masculine and feminine are subverted as female Sophia represents creative transcendence, primordial passion for justice, and knowledge of the truth while Jesus incarnates these divine characteristics in an immanent way relative to bodiliness and the earth.

The creative, redeeming paradox of Jesus-Sophia points the way to a reconciliation of opposites and their transformation from enemies into a liberating, unified diversity. In the end gender is not constitutive of the Christian doctrine of incarnation.

In addition to helping untie the knot of sexist Christology, wisdom categories bring other benefits to the fore: 1. A relation to the whole cosmos is already built into the biblical wisdom tradition, and this orients Christology beyond the human world to the ecology of the earth, and indeed, to the universe, a vital move in this era of planetary crisis. As the embodiment of Sophia who is fashioner of all that exists, Jesus the Christ’s redeeming care intends the flourishing of all creatures and the whole earth itself. The power of Christ’s Spirit is seen wherever human beings share in this love for the earth, tending its fruitfulness, attending to its limits, and guarding it from destruction.

2. Wisdom discourse likewise directs belief toward a global, ecumenical perspective respectful of other religious paths. The imagery of wisdom operates today much the way the logos metaphor functioned in the early Christian centuries to signify the play of God’s goodness and just order throughout the world, a function now somewhat curtailed for the logos due to its long association with androcentric theology and imperialistic ecclesial history. Sophia, however, is people loving; her light shines everywhere, and those whom she makes to be friends of God and prophets are found throughout the wide world. Jesus-Sophia personally incarnates her gracious care in one particular history, for the benefit of all, while she lays down a multiplicity of paths in diverse cultures by which all people may seek, and seeking find her.

3. By becoming one with humanity in incarnation and suffering, Sophia, whose paths are justice and peace, shows that the passion of God is clearly directed toward the lifting of oppression and the establishing of right relations. The table is set for those who will come, the bread and wine ready to nourish the struggle. What is needed is to listen to the loud cries of Jesus-Sophia resounding in the cries of the poor, violated, and desperate, and to ally our lives as the wisdom community to the divine creative, redeeming work in the world.

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In sum, the doctrine of the incarnation confesses that in Jesus the Christ God has truly entered human history, for the sake of our salvation. Neither the divinity nor the humanity referred to in that confession requires maleness as an exclusive, constitutive condition. On the one hand God is not male. The metaphors of Word and Son most often used to articulate the relation between Jesus the Christ and God’s absolute mystery signify not maleness in God but a certain divine relationality that can be superbly reprised in the symbol of Sophia.

On the other hand, human history signifies the whole human race in a solidarity of sin and suffering, as the classical doctrine has always affirmed. The historical particularities of Jesus’ person, including his sex, racial characteristics, linguistic heritage, social class, and so on, do not signify that God is more appropriately incarnate into these realities than into others.

Theology will have come of age when the particularity that is highlighted is not Jesus’ historical sex but the scandal of his option for the poor and marginalized in the Spirit of his compassionate, liberating Sophia-God. That is the scandal of particularity that really matters, aimed as it is toward the creation of a new order of wholeness in justice. Toward that end, feminist theological speech about Jesus the Wisdom of God shifts the focus of reflection off maleness and onto the whole theological significance of what transpires in the Christ event. Jesus in his human, historical specificity is confessed as Sophia incarnate, revelatory of the liberating graciousness of God imaged as female; women, as friends of Jesus-Sophia, share equally with men in his saving mission throughout time and can fully represent Christ, being themselves, in the Spirit, other Christs. These are the steps on the way to a community of equals interrelated in genuine mutuality, in theory as well as practice.

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Barbara Hallensleben has, since 1994, held the position of ordinary Professor

of dogmatic theology and theology of ecumenism at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. She is a member of the Institute for Ecumenical Studies and director of the Study Centre for Eastern Churches, as well as the International Theological Commission in the Vatican (from 2004-2014). In addition to her numerous positions in ecumenical dialogue including Consultant to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, she serves as a member of the Vatican Commission for the Study of the Female Diaconate.

What is Sophiology?

Barbara Hallensleben “What is sophiology?” is a question to ask not at the outset but rather at the end of a trail of thought and experience. If we ask this question at the start, sophiology could easily fall into being just another “ology,” which, like most “ologies” can be tempted into becoming ideo-logies. Ideologies are systems of thought that attempt to explain the world as fully as possible and shape it according to pre-set ideas.

Wisdom (Greek: sophia; Latin: sapientia) is motivated differently. A person who knows a lot is not commonly referred to as wise. The description is more easily assigned to a modest, humble person, who knows quasi-intuitively—without speaking or debating—what really matters in life. As wisdom has a practical quality to it, wise people know how to master life even in the most difficult of circumstances, and are able to guide not only themselves but others to act in the right way. This is why wisdom is a preferred virtue in leadership. Aristotle wrote “sapientis est ordinare”—the wise are able to establish right order.

King Solomon embodied wisdom. He had asked Yahweh for a “wise and understanding heart” (1 Kings 3:12).

His judgements as a ruler enabled people to recognize “that the wisdom of God was in him” (3:28). Wisdom is sensed as belonging to God not only in Israel but in other nations and cultures. This is how Thomas Aquinas would later define wisdom, as insight into the highest of causes and to be the ultimate goal. Only God has this broad horizon, as postmodernity knows too well. Wisdom cannot be learned; it is not certified with a diploma; it is a gift from God and points beyond the earthly world.

Augustine contributed great theology on the wisdom of God, and wrote that it is particularly found in mystical theology. In the “Book of Divine Wisdom” by the Dominican Heinrich Seuse (+1366), the feminine dimension of wisdom

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reappears, probably due to the exchange he had with his spiritual daughters in the female monasteries. In his book “Secret Wisdom,” the Reformed pastor and hagiographer Walter Nigg (+1988) compiled Protestant testimonies for a theology of wisdom, and Jakob Böhme (+1624) was, by a sophianic approach, to shape the philosophy of German Idealism.

As a rudimentary introduction into wisdom’s development, it is clear that sophiology cannot fall exclusively under the auspices of the Eastern Church. In Constantinople (presentday Istanbul) the significant architectural monument of Hagia Sophia was built in the then capital of the Roman Empire, probably to display a resemblance of the ruling Emperor to the All-Ruler Christ. In the Sophia churches of the Russian world though, a Mariological interpretation predominates. In Russia, a mysterious icon of a female ruler under the throne of the heavenly ruler also perpetuates the memory of the earthly House of Wisdom. Such tradition was foundational in developing Russian religious philosophy and 20th century theology that was to unite both the Eastern and Western traditions.

Divine wisdom became the centre for the world view of Russian Orthodox economist, religious philosopher, priest and theologian Sergej Bulgakov (1871-1944). For him experience precedes reflection. He described the experience he underwent on first visiting Hagia Sophia: “The narrowness and heaviness of our small and suffering self is gone…” he wrote, “the soul is healed from it, melting into the arches and uniting with them. It becomes the world: I in the world and the world in me—this feeling is not only of happiness and joy, but bliss—a kind of final insight, all in all and all in me, an all-encompassing allness, the world in its unity. This is really the Sophia, the present unity of the world in the Logos.” The death of his son, not yet four years old, also caused heaven to open for him in an unexpected way. A former Marxist, Bulgakov went from being a convinced materialist to an “idealist,” only to discover that “Humans do not have to flee from the (material) world, for Christ condescends to it at the marriage of the Lamb.” When God not only imposes God’s will on us, but communicates wisdom and goodness as dimensions of God’s being, then the world is infinitely precious. It shares in the mystery of God. The earth is entrusted to humanity, not only as the stage of an ethical probation, but as the material for the preparation of a new creation.

Are we now better able to answer the question “What is sophiology?” To review, we at least know that wisdom is not a system of thought that is imposed on reality to form a party, and to compete against other systems of thought. It is the ability to receive reality in its character as a gift, opening us to understand and act in a new, surprising, unique way.

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THE ENDURING LOVE STORY Wisdom always possesses a personal quality as we Christians confess. It has its origin in God the Father, is revealed in the Son and becomes accessible to creation in the Holy Spirit.

Not only are humans created in the image of God, but all creatures bear traces of divine wisdom, “every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine,” as Dostoyevsky wrote.

Wisdom is revealed to each of us in a very personal way, and yet it is a single wisdom that gives us the confidence for unity, enabling us to shape this world together in peace and justice. Wisdom concurs an understanding that accompanies respect for the differences of others. Wisdom creates friendship.

Wisdom has a special message for every time and age. In today’s world, shaped by mistrust, violence and propaganda, we are tempted to accord priority to our own survival and wellbeing, giving way to sacrificing our freedom and own ideas for political economic and juridic promises of security. Wisdom exhibits openness in this world theatre and advises us: Do not resign yourself to the countless victims of the history of the powerful. Do not try to save only yourself. Do not sell your soul to the self-made idols of this world. God the one Creator and Redeemer has built his house among us. Finite life is precisely the life that the eternal God in God’s wisdom has destined for us and shares with us.

There is no “secular” world that is completely godless. Rather, the world is “secular” precisely because God created it as a free, loving counterpart, as the “Bride of the Lamb.” The apocalypse of this world is the flip side of an immense, enduring love story in which we all participate.

Sophia in Exile:

The Magdala Interview Gregory Rupik and Michael Martin.

Greg Rupik is a contributing editor of With One Accord.

For more information on his background, please visit our website.

Michael Martin is a writer, philosopher, poet, musician,

songwriter, editor, director of the Center for Sophiological Studies and a biodynamic farmer in Michigan. He spent sixteen years as a Waldorf teacher and Master Teacher, and taught English, Philosophy, and Theology at the university and college level for over seventeen years. He began farming in 1990 and currently raises dairy cows, bees, and other animals while managing a market garden with his wife and some of his nine children. His poetry and scholarship have appeared in many journals.

He is the editor of “Jesus the Imagination: A Journal of Spiritual Revolution” and author of many books including “The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics” (Angelico Press, 2015), “Transfiguration: Notes Toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything” (Angelico Press 2018), and “Sophia in Exile” (Angelico Press 2021). His website is www. thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com.

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Greg Rupik The title of your latest book is Sophia in Exile. As a springboard for our conversation what might the phrase “Sophia in exile” say about our current state of affairs? What does it say about where we are now in the Church and the world?

Michael Martin We do live in a kind of fabricated pseudo-world that is distanced from what is real. So much of our lives are spent online or in virtual non-real worlds. Unlike most people my days are not only online but I’m a farmer so I have to deal with what’s real to get through the day. There is this idea of forgetfulness—that we forget who we are: “Why we are here?” and “What is our purpose?” These are important questions.

GR How does this forgetfulness manifest itself? What have we forgotten?

MM We have forgotten our relationship to creation and our relationship to the Divine and that is the centre-piece of sophiology. Sophiology calls us to remember those two things, to enter into a way of living that acknowledges and reverences the two. Because we are exiled from nature and creation, and also from our own biology, we outwardly reject what is real in creation and biology when we cease having a relationship with the Divine.

GR There is a kind of reverence that is lost then—the ability to appreciate some of the inherent created wisdom in nature.

MM I’ll go further. It denies the sacramental reality of all that is. You see, Sophia is not in exile, we are. As soon as we pay attention to the wisdom in the world, she awakens and so do we into a reciprocal relationship.

GR What is it that we need to do to re-engage?

MM As I specialize in the Metaphysical poets, such as the 17th-century English poet, Thomas Traherne and last century’s Eleanor Farjeon, both show us how to see the world as a child, just like the Gospel says “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” They engage how a grown-up can become a child again.

GR For you, the medium of poetry—and these poets’ capacities to see, to materially engage with the beauty of creation—is a way of both seeing the world in a new light, and an invitation to others to experience the world in that new light.

MM Yes, particularly in Evelyn Underhill’s famous book Mysticism, originally published in 1911, she has a section on poetry. The French philosopher, Simone Weil, and William Blake as well, were trying, via their poetry and writings, to open up our perception, to show God in all things. They were driven by their own experience to see how it could measure up to the tradition in which they were raised.

GR There is a traditional opposition between techne and poesis, of creating for the sake of control (techne) and creating to reveal something true, good, or beautiful (poesis). Does this tension shed any light on our sense of “exile” today, or any way to re-enchant our experience of the world? www.magdalacolloquy.org

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MM For me it’s been a long process. On our farm we raise dairy and beef cows, sheep, bees, chickens and geese. Our garden is half an acre and my wife and I do it all without power tools, not even using a plough. You realize you are not distanced from creation you’re working with—but not everyone can do this. How do we enter into creation? That’s one thing. The arts play a role in this and how to educate children plays a role in it and increasingly technology gets in the way. A child can read on the internet about snakes and see videos, but it is a very different experience to see a snake in its natural surroundings. It is very simple and we try to make it complicated. It is not esoteric, it is going back to the childhood state of perception and relationship and it becomes uncomplicated that way. My book Transfiguration: Notes Toward a Radical Catholic ReImagination of Everything explores how to make things more real, how we can do so in science, education and economics. G. K. Chesterton is a great example of one who saw what was coming and Hillaire Belloc too. They were doing important work in the early 20th century. It is unfortunate that these Catholic writers get compartmentalized into a radical Catholic

bubble, because their message is really for everyone.

Traditional crafts also connect us with what is real. Working with real things, like textiles, wool etc.

GR What I find interesting is that engaging honestly with real things in nature, in one sense, reveals how straightforward and simple they are, but it also invites us in to their complexity and the ways those things can still surprise and teach us.

MM Being connected to the real requires flexibility. This we have to do on our farm: to be attentive to what’s there and adjust to the changes. We celebrate Christian festivals on our farm in a folk religion sort of way. For instance, we celebrate the Michaelmas festival with a procession. Some of my children made a paper mache dragon’s head and we went around the farm until they met St. Michael under a walnut tree who transformed the dragon. Then we had a feast, a harvest festival.

Things like that—very simple, that add so much life to the community precisely by not shying away from the wisdom of creation.

Elinor Dickson served as Director of Psychological Services at St. Michael’s

Hospital, Toronto for l8 years and was deeply involved in Diocesan and religious communities as a consultant, advisor and community leader. She has led many workshops over the years, lectured widely and collaborated with the Jungian writer, Marion Woodman. This collaboration included cowriting “Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness (Alfred A. Knopf/Shambhala 1996). She is the author of “Dancing at the Still Point: Marion Woodman, Sophia and Me: A Friendship Remembered “(Chiron 2019). Her forthcoming book is “The Wisdom Option: Humanity’s Final Evolutionary Challenge.”

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The Science of Sophia: A Refulgence of Eternal Light Elinor Dickson In an ancient Gnostic text, there is a captivating image of Sophia extending her finger to send light into matter and then following that light into the chaos. For me, this picture conjures up the Big Bang, when something burst forth from nothing. Or, according to 20th century Indian mystic, Sri Aurobindo, it is when the hidden God, the force of undifferentiated consciousness, was first revealed. In the 19th century that revelation through Sophia (Savitri) was articulated by science as evolution. To recognize the archetype of Sophia in the evolution of our time, we need to turn to the light.

We read of Sophia’s journey into light in the Old Testament’s book of Wisdom (7:24-27) “For Wisdom is more mobile than any motion because of her pureness, she pervades and penetrates all things…a refulgence of eternal light….and while remaining in herself she renews all things.” Science took a little longer to recognize Her.

QUANTUM POTENTIAL In order to preserve and maintain a materialistic stance, concepts like consciousness or psychological processes were eliminated from the scientific vocabulary. Similarly, in physics, the microscopic vibrations in the space between things were considered to be background noise. Perceived as a constant, these vibrations were subtracted from calculations until thirty plus years ago when it was discovered that this noise was actually a quantum sea of light called the zero-point-field. In explaining this sea of light, American astrophysicist, Bernard Haisch, writes, “We see things by way of contrast. The eye works by letting light fall on the otherwise dark retina. But if the eye was filled with light, there would be no darkness to afford a contrast. The zero-point-field is such a blinding light. Since it is everywhere, inside and outside of us, permeating every atom in our bodies, we are effectively blind to it…It blinds us to its presence. The world of light that we do see is all the rest over and above the zero-point-field.”1 When it comes to the refulgence of eternal light, what science and scripture can agree on is Sophia is not “out there.” She is everywhere, within and without, permeating every atom in our bodies and in all creation.

Building upon wave theory, the zero-point-field was found to be not only a sea of light but also a sea of information about the entire universe carried by interfering vacuum torsion waves. Between particle/wave, matter/spirit, body/soul, the transforming element is information. This reconciling third between the opposites, renowned physicist, David Bohm, called active information. This is not ‘ordinary’ information, but information contained within the quantum potential that informs or gives form to energy.

In biology, the “active” information comes through what American neurobiologist, Candace Pert, called the molecules of emotion—the Inforealm. She writes, “We can no longer think of the emotions as having less validity than physical, material substance, but instead must

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see them as cellular signals that are involved in the process of translating information into physical reality, literally transforming mind into matter. Emotions are the nexus between matter and mind, going back and forth between the two and influencing both.”2 I am reminded that in the spirituallyrich 12th century, Sophia, or Sapientia, was considered as both the underlying order of the universe and the material creation of the world through her great effect.

THE ACTION OF SOPHIA In physics, the wave theory of light was prominent, but with the discovery of complementarity, science realized that particles also have a wave function, and the light function of particle/wave operates within our DNA and beyond. Working in his lab, German biophysicist, Fritz-Albert Popp discovered the light in matter. “Biophoton vibrations in the body causes molecules to vibrate and create their own signature frequency which acted as its unique driving force and also its means of communication.”3 Not only is this instantaneous communication going on within the body, but Popp also found that every molecule has a unique frequency that extends beyond the individual body and influences other bodies The research in physics and biology is often considered analogous to Carl Jung’s discovery of the collective unconscious and archetypal energy patterns. These embrace both instinct and image and guide the interface between our genetic and cultural coding. Likewise, Jung imagined matter and spirit as two cones whose apexes “touch but do not touch” allowing for the constant free flow of energy that informs and transforms our conscious position in the world. In the words of Canadian analyst, Marion Woodman, Sophia is the “continuous process within the eternal,” constantly drawing humanity

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into the ongoing evolution of humanity’s conscious awareness.

Another way we can observe the action of Sophia is in the messages of dreams. A client of mine dreamed she was approaching a stage where Chinese dancers were leaping about while setting off firecrackers. A tall woman comes on stage with a long, flowing blue mantle weaving her way among the dancers.

The dream carried a personal message for the dreamer, but I was struck by the psyche’s knowledge of particle/wave theory! Another dreamer sees a magnificent dark woman triumphantly riding an enormous wave to shore: “I was frightened, but suddenly my friends and I were all molecules dancing in the wave and our momentum was bringing Sophia to shore.”

We frequently realize we have a need for something by its absence. Today in our muchvaulted “age of reason” we have, in many areas, not evolved at all but devolved into a sort of nihilistic nightmare made possible by a split between matter and spirit, body and mind. If the mind becomes disembodied, or the body traumatized, the point that meets and does not meet becomes instead a chasm for ensuing madness. Turning on today’s television, might indicate that humanity is in devolution. Our hope can only lie in the fact that Her light shines in the darkness. That the collective trauma we experience in our bodies and in nature, is, in fact, being not only recognized but in a process of being released.

To be made whole requires the freeflowing energy of the soul, not just our best efforts to save the earth and ourselves. In this endeavour, the more science penetrates the heart of matter, the more it can affirm the need for a greater understanding of Sophia, whose ongoing evolutionary work is our own.

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Bibliography 1 Haisch, Bernard. The God Theory: Universes, Zero-Point Fields and What’s Behind It All, Red Wheel/Weiser, York Beach, ME., 2006, p. 71.

2 Pert Candace, Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1999, p. 189.

3 McTaggart, Lynne, The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, N.Y., 2002, p. 59.

“Holy Wisdom is the mother of the universe, the unoriginate, living source of all that exists.”

Elizabeth A. Johnson (She Who Is)

Awakening: Thomas Merton and Sophia Lucinda M. Vardey is the editor of With One Accord. For more on her background please visit our website.

In 1962 American Trappist, Thomas Merton, penned a short poem reflection and prayer entitled Hagia Sophia. Like all his writings, Merton had a gift of expressing, with abject honesty, what was in his heart, recording in his diaries, letters, poems and books his pathways to truth. His experiences were numerous and multi-faceted, as he read widely the works of many masters of mysticism and divine revelations, not only within western Christianity, but in the Eastern Churches as well as eastern religions particularly Buddhism.

The sophiology evident in the text of Hagia Sophia has been recorded at length; it echoes much of what others share in this issue. It is an important document because it portrays the essence of experiencing Sophia’s presence: the opening of an awareness of her many aspects including the loving, uniting,

peaceful, healing and merciful elements that compose her being. The mystery of her within Nature, the invitation to participate and transform oneself into the gentleness and “unutterable sweetness,” the love, the “Diffuse Shining of God,” the feminine Child who plays “at all times before the Creator” and in the world “obvious and unseen.” She has a purity of the maternal reflected in the figure of Mary, who consents to receiving God so that God can enter God’s creation.

Mary is then Sophia, as is Jesus who comes to redeem, restore, heal and teach the ways of the heart. “Sophia is Gift…..She is God-given and God Himself as Gift.”

In the beginning of Hagia Sophia Merton dreams of himself as a man lying asleep in a hospital. In the early hours of the morning on the feast of The Visitation he hears a soft voice of a nurse awakening him from separation and loneliness “into unity of love,” the cool hand of the nurse touching him with “all life, the touch of the Spirit.”

This experience comes to him in the vulnerable state of being asleep, “without

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awareness and without defense….Love takes him by the hand,” he wrote” and opens to him the doors of another life, another day.”

In a letter to Proba, St. Augustine wrote of the centrality of desire for God as being a worthy part of a life of prayer. That God, who knows what it is we need, can only give us what we are able to receive. In the case of Thomas Merton, four years after writing Hagia Sophia on Easter Sunday morning 1966, he was led into an embodied experience of what could be interpreted as prophetic desire. Recovering from a surgical procedure on his back in a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, he was to fall deeply in love with the student nurse attending him. He documented the details of this relationship in his journals, noting that he had an emotional need “for feminine companionship and love.” The love he received from her aroused in him “an overwhelming gratitude” that, even involved with a woman as a monk, he felt peace and the rightness of letting “love take hold of me in spite of all my fear.”

The fear, of course, was the unknown, the unacceptability that could lead to dishonour. But what he recorded was the beauty of a meeting of hearts—the being “known” by each other at their cores, and how in her heart he saw “all (its) preciousness before God, all its beauty…”

He described surrendering to her womanly wisdom “which instinctively seeks out the wound in me that most needed her sweetness and lavishes her love upon me there.”

Merton loved what is “the deep, mysterious, personal, unique potential that is in her…trying to become free in my love.” Even though, in obedience to his abbot, Merton ceased seeing and corresponding with her, he claimed the experience as a “profound event” in his life. It was one that altered and transformed his whole self, and that their love in him continued as a “hidden and transfigured presence….she will always be to me her soft voice speaking out of the depths of my own heart.” Acknowledging that he needed this love, he came to the insight that it helped heal what was missing in his monastic vocation. And, during the pain of final separation, he sensed the “nearness and mercy of Mary.”

Theologian and Merton scholar, Christopher Pramuk, observed in his book Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton that his interpretation of Sophia in his writing was the discovery of “gentleness in reality,” that, like Mary, seat of Wisdom, Christ is to be birthed in the truth of ourselves, and that Sophia awakened “a union that already exists.”

Thomas Merton’s relationship with his nurse, although seen as a digression, could have been, instead, a doorway. HIs desire to be awakened from sleep by a gentle feminine presence, led him to receiving that presence in the flesh, to not only help him realize what he desired, but to find the spiritual jewels embedded within the experience, what he identified as the very real possibility of life in union with love. “Such is the awakening of one man,” he wrote of Hagia Sophia, into a new world, a new reality “out of languor and darkness, out of helplessness, out of sleep.”

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“O Wisdom stretching from end to end, establishing and ordering everything (Wis 8:1) and arranging all things sweetly by enhancing feeling and making it orderly, guide what we do as your everlasting truth requires, so that each of us may securely glory in you and say “He ordered love in me” (Song 2:4).

St. Bernard of Clairvaux (Sermon 50)

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With One Accord O God, our Creator, You, who made us in Your image, give us the grace of inclusion in the heart of Your Church.

R: With one accord, we pray.

Jesus, our Saviour, You, who received the love of women and men, heal what divides us, and bless what unites us.

R: With one accord, we pray.

Holy Spirit, our Comforter, You, who guides this work, provide for us as we hold in hope Your will for the good of all.

R: With one accord, we pray.

Mary, mother of God, pray for us.

St. Joseph, stay close to us.

Divine Wisdom, enlighten us.

R: With one accord, we pray.

Amen.

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With One Accord journal is published in English, Italian and French. To access the other language editions please visit our website.

With One Accord signature music for the Magdala interview composed by Dr. John Paul Farahat and performed by Emily VanBerkum and John Paul Farahat.

Images used in this edition: Cover: “Dawn at Montecasale” photo by John Dalla Costa.

Page 2 “Sunset at Montecasale” photo by John Dalla Costa.

Page 5 Detail from “Wisdom and Strength“ by Paolo Veronese (1565).

Page 5 “King Solomon with Three of his Wives” by Giovanni Venanzi di Pesaro (1668).

Page 9 “Sapientia” 12th century illustrated manuscript, artist unknown.

Page 10 “Hagia Sophia“ Istanbul, photo by John Dalla Costa.

Page 15 Detail from “Rainbow over Sansepolcro” by John Dalla Costa.

Pages 19 “Where the Robins Sing” by Thomas Hovenden (1890) Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

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This edition Copyright © 2022 Saint Basil’s Catholic Parish, Toronto, Canada For editorial enquiries, please contact editor@magdalacolloquy.org ISSN 2563-7924 PUBLISHER Morgan V. Rice, CSB EDITOR Lucinda M. Vardey ASSOCIATE EDITOR Emily VanBerkum CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Gregory Rupik PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Michael Pirri VIDEO EDITOR Eric Patrick Hong CONSULTANT John Dalla Costa TRANSLATORS Elena Buia Rutt (Italian) Patricia O’Grady (French) ADMINISTRATOR Margaret D’Elia