Sophia

http://zmyztickleonion.blogspot.com/2007/09/sophia.html















For wisdom is quicker to move than any motion;
She is so pure, she pervades and permeates all things.
She is a breath of the power of god,
Pure emanation of the glory of the almighty
So that nothing impure can find its way into her.
For she is a reflection of the eternal light
untarnished mirror of god’s active power
and image of his goodness.
Wisdom7:24-26 from the New Jerusalem Bible.

i am currently taking a course on the Prayer of the Heart. One of the books for this course is 'The Wisdom Way of Knowing' by Cynthia Bourgeault. i found the above passage on pg. 12. In the liteRAture of post-exilic IsRAel, "even Wisdom itself is portRAyed as a 'she'; the feminine aspect of God, who dances and weaves her way between the created and undreated realms in her role as as primordial, pristine awareness".
The Sophia (Σoφíα, Greek for "wisdom") was a central element for the Gnostic Christians in the cosmological understanding of the Universe. A Feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the Feminine aspects of God and the Bride of Christ, she is considered to have fallen from grace in some way, in so doing creating or helping to create the material world. For the Gnostics, the drama of the redemption of the Sophia through Christ or the Logos is the central drama of the universe. The Sophia resides in all of us as the Divine Spark. Sophia's fear and anguish of losing her life (just as she lost the light of the One) caused confusion and longing to return to it. Because of these longings, matter (Greek: hyle, ‘υλη) and soul (Greek: psyche, ψυχή) accidentally came into existence through the four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. The purpose of life is to enable the Divine Spark to be released from its captivity in matter and reestablish its connection with or simply return to God who is perceived as being the source of the Divine Light. In the Gnostic Christian tradition (eg the Valentinian Church, the Cathars, the modern Lectorium Rosicrucianum etc) Christ is seen as an Avatar of the Light which has taken human form in order to lead humanity back to the Light. The Cathars in particular saw this idea expressed most powerfully in the opening words of the Gospel of St John. Sophia is the syzygy of Jesus Christ (i.e. she forms a unity with Christ, being cojoined with him), and Gnostics believed that she was the Holy Spirit of the Trinity.
In Judaism the Sophia appears alongside the Shekinah, 'the Glory of God', a figure who plays a key role in the cosmology of the Kabbalists as an expression of the feminine aspect of God.
The official view of the Eastern Orthodox Church is that she is the same person as the Divine Logos, referred to in the feminine, who became incarnate as Jesus Christ.
The Sophia is seen as being expressed in all Creation, the Natural World, and and integral to the spiritual well-being of mankind.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(gnosticism)
The photae 4 this is of the snow on the roof of our house after the great blizzard which began on 12/29/06, the day of my mom's Ascension. When i took the photae, i had intended to use it as the background for DesertFlight. Oddly, this photae was taken on the 3rd Day.... (sea SuCasa-October 2006-for the Lotus story)