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Jan. 28, 2010 She has many names. Dozens, perhaps, or hundreds, for all we know. Her identity has been hidden by man-created shadows and snide renunciation for two thousand years. However, she was an important part of humanity’s awe and reverence systems before the Flood, long before Buddha, Christ, or Mohammed entered history. Every group of people, every human society, before 2000 dark years ago, knew her by at least one of her appellations. The Greeks called her Sophia, translated as Wisdom. Biblical Hebrews declared her Shekhinah (Gift of God) and Chokhmah, also meaning Wisdom. Logos was one of her designations; the Eternal Word, also the Role of Wisdom. The Gnostics of the first couple of centuries AD knew her as the Bride of Christ, or the Syzgy. Other old names included but do not end with Achamoth, Prunikos, Aeon, Metra, Sophia Perennis (Perpetual Wisdom), the Great Silence, Orche (The Word), Ruah (Spirit), Mother of All and Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. These names weren’t in every case meant benignly or honorably, but then, not all mere men are keen on the thought of a feminine possessor of Universal Wisdom. Native Peoples of both North and South America understood and respected her as Mother Earth, Corn Mother, First Mother, Wise Woman, and Owner of the Earth, all the time realizing that her land and the life upon it could never belong to any human person. People were put here, according to the original caretakers of the land, to care for the Mother’s creations, the plants and every animal that shared the Earth with them. Only the wisest being in heaven could be trusted with custody of this home. I personally know her as Lady Sophia, Lady Wisdom. My prayers are launched toward her. My hopes are placed in her hands. I know! I know what you’re thinking. This admission of prayer and belief from an agnostic who has proclaimed her discomfort with the very idea of a supernatural being running things? Stranger stuff than this has happened. I simply found, after a long search, a personification of what I believe and feel deeply about the Universe. You see, I grew up with a mental image of God as the grumpiest of grumpy old men. If anybody ever said, “Carpe Diem!” (Seize the day!) to the bearded grouch, He would have seized it all right and squeezed the living snot out of it. The Deity’s proclivities leaned toward smiting and deluging, hurling and thundering when his temper was aroused. In general, He enjoyed flinging humans into hell for the least error. On his really bad days he was known to disintegrate entire communities. When this Master of the Universe, who doesn’t even trust the angels (Job 15:15), created a couple of clueless humans to do His bidding, He located them in a lovely, high-walled, gated garden filled with wild animals. Sounds to me like a maximum security penitentiary with a touch of Laura Ashley décor and the smell of a zoo. Then He informed the two wide-eyed innocents that they were forbidden to eat the fruit of a certain tree. Any parent with half a brain knows that the first thing the kids will look around to do when forbidden is the forbidden. There’s a story, apocryphal of course, that Lady Wisdom watched all this unholy falderal going on in the Fertile Triangle’s Retirement Facility and came to a resolute decision. She took on her aspect of a python, one of the most beautiful of the beasts in the Garden and, by far, the cleverest. Waiting for the precise and proper moment, Sophia Snakelady twined herself around the off-limits tree, which bowed toward the earth with the burden of its ambrosial fruit, and waited for Eve to come by. Lady Wisdom was bent on bringing the Master’s masochism to a screeching halt. She intended to rescue these poor baby-sized humans and take them under her motherly wing. We all know the balance of this story. Sophia freed God’s small playthings, helped them to be born out of Eden and stayed with them while they suffered their “Father’s” punishments for eating the ineffably edible. Imagine what the parents of our race had to endure for their infraction. Constant work by the sweat of his brow for Adam. Giving birth in blood and agony for Eve. Death at the end of a fear-filled life. All because of God’s ego. I ask you, who needs a god like that? When I posed that question to myself and sought through the Universe for a befitting alternate, I found Sophia, or she found me. Not only is she a better-tempered being, she would never-ever have sent her only son to earth to die on a cross at the hands of Romans. The Lady does not believe in sin, per se. There are mistakes and there is hideous pain caused by twisted thinking and there are people who cannot forgive themselves for Adam and Eve’s Fall from Grace. Then there are popes, priests and preachers who see nothing but evil growing and spreading inside their own souls, as well as inside the poor people under their pastoral care. Sophia knows better. In her wisdom she understands that religion is the true scourge of human-kind’s life on Earth. Not one of humanity’s blights - plagues, wars, droughts, floods, earthquakes, over-population, dwindling foodstuffs, deteriorating natural resources – have done human beings more mental, social and cultural damage. Religion in its present forms is nothing more than a system of brain-washing and domination by the few over the multitude. We the people are not allowed by our religions to think for ourselves and follow our own hearts’ directions. Nor are we encouraged to find life’s meanings for and by ourselves. They take our children from us when they are barely out of infancy and indoctrinate them into an abusive thought system. The worst part of this system is the proselytizing, no matter who is broadcasting it. What is taught to children in Sunday school or religious school is abominable. Babies are told that because they were baptized into their all-holy church no one else’s faith is fitting, true or kosher, only theirs. And the folks who practice those other religions are all going to Hell when they die, to burn forever. I figure it this way: most of us have already burned for what seems like forever in our earthly lives. Isn’t that enough? Haven’t we all put in our time as modern Jobs? Job, who suffered at the hands of Satan. However, Satan made a deal with God. He challenged the Lord and Master to allow him, as the “prosecutor” on the Devine Council, to take everything away from gentle Job to prove the human is not faithful to God. God agrees. He basically tosses Job to the Devil and watches while the blighted man endures horrid pain. And The Book of Job is considered one of history’s most moving books. Hmmm.
One last thing. Many people who do honor to Sophia, Lady Wisdom, believe she is God’s spouse. They say she was the Spirit who brooded above the dark waters during the Act of Creation. When I think about it, I imagine that with a mate like Old Grumpy, I’d have brooded too.
Writing was always my first choice in life. I began writing at the age of 8, small books about pioneers heading west. Little did I know then that I would be living in the most "western" of all the states, Texas. No one told the Texans that they are simply Southerners who, like Bugs Bunny, took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and wound up here.
I am sneaking up on 70 years of age and now own a vast store of useless knowledge. Happy to share any or all of it with you all.
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