Sophia Serve

Welcome to Sophia Serve!

After the sort of career I’ve had, ten years of freelance writing and twenty years in book publishing, most people become literary agents or start their own small publishing enterprise. Instead, I decided to become a thought partner for people who need a little extra help pushing words around the page or across the screen. Sophia Serve is the name of my writing and publishing service.

SophiaServe.com is a place for you to read and think about writing as an expression of your deeper “you.”  And talk to other folks who share your passion. You’ll also find information here about the books I’ve written. Or co-written. Or wish I’d written.

Sophia, the Divine Feminine Wisdom, welcomes us as a mother, sister, friend.  We’re glad you’re here.

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]

Soup Mantra for 2012

After several days in Barcelona, steeped in Antoni Gaudi’s colorful swirling architecture, including the extra-terrestrial spired  Sagrada Familia cathedral, the fairy-taled magical Park Güell, 

    

 

the Pedrera, an apartment building with no straight lines and a roof that offers the most amazing views of the city, and, of course, Casa Batilló’s dragon chimney, the more down to earth 1950’s Casa el Cherro invited us in to enjoy yet another face of Spain. 

We’d driven west along the Mediterranean coast toward Malaga for hours and the prospect of walking a few blocks to dinner, even past several abandoned store fronts laced with graffiti, was very inviting. Our stomachs demanded more than chocolate pastries and juicy oranges, as wonderful as they were. 

Casa el Cherro proved to be an intimate combination neighborhood deli, tapas bar, restaurant, taverna and meat market. I’d recommend it to you if I could describe how we actually found it in Murcia after navigating several roundabouts through narrow streets.

I don’t totally understand the Catalonian penchant for hanging dried Iberian “black” hams everywhere from roadside fast food cafeteria ceilings to  fancier eating establishments. But, by the time I entered Casa el Cherro’s, the long legged Jamon, like pork stalactites precariously swinging over my head, no longer surprised me. If my Spanish had been better, I could have read what was written on the little inverted plastic pyramids attached to their bottoms. Perhaps it quoted Animal Farm: some pigs may be more equal than others. Or these inverted funnels may have been designed to simply catch stray drips. I had over the course of the past several days quietly watched these wrapped and netted salty legs, but never caught a drip in the act. Unlike our plumped-up fatty, rounder hams, the need for drip-catching seemed unnecessary. These porkers had taken on more of the dense aura of beef jerky. But I wondered, what sort of pigs had legs like these? Obviously taller and skinnier than any I have ever known.

Our congenial host ushered us to a table away from still other rows of hanging meats and with a soft, ironed white linen napkin with a discreetly woven "Casa el Cherro" safely tucked in my lap, I pretended to read the menu. No pictures. No alternative English explanations. Every now and then a white-aproned grandfatherly or elderly uncle figure appeared from what must be the kitchen back there just behind a lighted curio cabinet sporting a glass-enclosed…you guessed it…super-huge pig leg.

In my halting Spanish, I asked what was the soup. Caliente, I hoped. Si. What’s in it?

“It is what it is.”  That’s what he said. I ordered it and I loved it, although I did share little hunks of what I determined was liver, to my liver-loving husband. 

So that’s how I got my new soup-mantra. And I feel it will apply to anything 2012 dishes up. I’ll look at it, recognize a few floating bits, be curious about what else lurks below the surface, but I’ll calmly enjoy it because… “It is what it is.”

 

Stone Shepherds

Only a short twenty mile drive north from Stonehenge (undoubtedly the most recognizable stone circle anywhere) stones silently march across the Wiltshire landscape at Avebury. I've visited this sacred English landscape several times--alone, with friends, with my son--and each time I leave thinking, "This place feels like a safe home."

One weekend, before the three large stones off to one side were circled with metal mesh, I sat under them munching a sandwich. Imagining. Who placed these huge stones, so precisely? Was their purpose to guard the night sky? I look at pictures of them now and wonder: What are they saying to us as we head into 2012?

Wherever they appear, stones so carefully positioned seem like shepherds out in their fields--the kinds of shepherds we hear about this time of year. The ones out watching over their flocks by night, waiting under the stars for important news.

More recent than the megalithic structures of Avebury, hundreds of "stone shepherds" made their way to the Polynesian island of Rapa Nui or Easter Island. They still stand there, guarding the island's perimeter, watching the night skies. Stéphanie Guisard has posted the most amazing collection of time lapse photography of the night sky--where the Milky Way dances! But it is her photos of these great "stone shepherds" that continue to stun me.

When I look at them, I hear angels singing, as they did that one Bethlehem star-filled night. "Fear not! Be of good cheer." And I revel in the mysteries, knowing that many shepherds stand watch over our planet.

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!