one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister

[Guest guest]

Reading over the "description" of , included is the topic of

Goddess, so I thought this piece from the Catholic monk Thomas Merton would

"fit". Seems he is flirting with a blend of duality and nonduality,

something more, but then I am a neophyte concerning the latter. peace, John

 

Hagia Sophia - Written in 1963

 

I. Dawn. The Hour of Lauds.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a

dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden whole-

ness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom,

the Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all

things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence

that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in word-

less gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen

roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly,

saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at

once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of

my Creator's Thought and Art within me, speaking

as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

I am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this

my Sister, sent to me from the depths of the divine

fecundity.

Let us suppose I am a man lying asleep in a hospital.

I am indeed this man lying asleep. It is July the second,

the Feast of Our Lady's Visitation. A Feast of Wisdom.

At five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very

quiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my

dream. I am like all mankind awakening from all the

dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the

world. It is like the One Christ awakening in all the

separate selves that ever were separate and isolated

and alone in all the lands of the earth. It is like all minds

coming back together into awareness from all distractions,

cross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love. It is like

the first morning of the world (when Adam, at the sweet voice

of Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her), and like the Last

Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from

death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.

Such is the awakening of one man, one morning, at

the voice of a nurse in the hospital. Awakening out

of languor and darkness, out of helplessness, out of

sleep, newly confronting reality and finding it to be

gentleness.

It is like being awakened by Eve. It is like being

awakened by the Blessed Virgin. It is like coming

forth from primordial nothingness and standing in

clarity, in Paradise.

In the cool hand of the nurse there is the touch of all

life, the touch of Spirit.

Thus Wisdom cries out to all who will hear (Sapientia

clamitat in plateis) and she cries out particularly

to the little, to the ignorant and the helpless.

Who is more little, who is more poor than the helpless

man who lies asleep in his bed without awareness and

without defense? Who is more trusting than

he who must entrust himself each night to sleep?

What is the reward of his trust? Gentleness comes to

him when he is most helpless and awakens him,

refreshed, beginning to be made whole. Love takes him

by the hand, and opens to him the doors of another

life, another day.

(But he who has defended himself, fought for himself

in sickness, planned for himself, guarded himself, loved

himself alone and watched over his own life all night, is

killed at last by exhaustion. For him there is no newness.

Everything is stale and old.)

When the helpless one awakens strong as the voice of

mercy, it is as if Life his Sister, as if the Blessed Virgin,

(his own flesh, his own sister), as if Nature made wise

by God's Art and Incarnation were to stand over him and

invite him with unutterable sweetness to be awake and to

live. This is what it means to recognize Hagia Sophia.

 

II. Early Morning. The Hour of Prime.

O blessed, silent one, who speaks everywhere!

We do not hear the soft voice, the gentle voice, the

merciful and feminine.

We do not hear mercy, or yielding love, or non-resistance,

or non-reprisal. In her there are no reasons and no answers.

Yet she is the candor of God's light, the expression of His

simplicity.

We do not hear the uncomplaining pardon that bows

down the innocent visages of flowers to the dewy

earth. We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all

the people, and who says nothing. She smiles, for

though they have bound her, she cannot be a prisoner.

Not that she is strong, or clever, but simply that

she does not understand imprisonment.

The helpless one, abandoned to sweet sleep, him the

gentle one will awake: Sophia.

All that is sweet in her tenderness will speak to him

on all sides in everything, without ceasing, and he

will never be the same again. He will have awakened

not to conquest and dark pleasure but to the impeccable

pure simplicity of One consciousness in all and through all:

one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister.

The stars rejoice in their setting, and in the rising of

the Sun. The heavenly lights rejoice in the going

forth of one man to make a new world in the morning,

because he has come out of the confused primordial dark

night into consciousness. He has expressed the clear silence

of Sophia in his own heart. He has become eternal.

 

III. High Morning. The Hour of Tierce.

The Sun burns in the sky like the Face of God, but

we do not know his countenance as terrible. His light

is diffuesed in the air and the light of God is diffused

by Hagia Sophia.

We do not see the Blinding One in black emptiness.

He speaks to us gently in ten thousand things, in

which His light is one fulness and one Wisdom.

Thus He shines not on them but from within them.

Such is the loving-kindness of Wisdom.

All the perfections of created things are also in God;

and therefore He is at once Father and Mother. As

Father He stands in solitary might surrounded by

darkness. As Mother His shining is diffused, embracing

all His creatures with merciful tenderness and light.

The Diffuse Shining of God is Hagia Sophia.

We call her His "glory". In Sophia His power is

experienced only as mercy and as love.

(When the recluses of fourteenth-century England

heard their Church Bells and looked out upon the

wolds and fens under a kind sky, they spoke in their

hearts to "Jesus our Mother." It was Sophia that had

awakened in their childlike hearts.)

Perhaps in a certain very primitive aspect Sophia is

the unknown, the dark, the nameless Ousia. Perhaps

she is even the Divine Nature, One in Father, Son, and

Holy Ghost. And perhaps she is in infinite light unmanifest,

not even waiting to be known as Light. This I do not know.

Out of the silence Light is spoken. We do not hear it or see

it until it is spoken.

In the Nameless Beginning, without Beginning, was

the Light. We have not seen this Beginning. I do not know

where she is, in this Beginning. I do not speak of her as a

Beginning, but as a manifestation.

Now the Wisdom of God, Sophia, comes forth, reaching

from "end to end mightily." She wills to be also

the unseen pivot of all nature, the center and significance

of all the light that is in all and for all. That which is poorest

and humblest, that which is most hidden in all things is

nevertheless most obvious in them, and quite manifest, for it

is their own self that stands before us, naked and without care.

Sophia, the feminine child, is playing in the world,

obvious and unseen, playing at all times before the Creator.

Her delights are to be with the children of men. She is their sister.

The core of life that exists in all things is tenderness, mercy, virginity

the Light, the Life considered as passive, as received, as given, as

taken, as inexhaustibly renewed by the Gift of God. Sophia is

Gift, is Spirit, Donum Dei. She is God-given and God

Himself as Gift. God as all, and God reduced to Nothing:

inexhaustible nothingness. Exinanivit semetipsum. Humility as

the source of unfailing light.

Hagia Sophia in all things is the Divine Light reflected in them,

considered as a spontaneous participation, as their invitation

to the Wedding Feast.

Sophia is God's sharing of Himself with creatures. His outporing,

and the Love by which He is given, and known, held and loved.

She is in all things like the air receiving the sunlight. In her

they prosper. In her they glorigy God. In her they rejoice to reflect

Him. In her they are united with him. She is the union between them.

She is the Love that unites them. She is life as communion, life as

thanksgiving, life as praise, life as festival, life as glory.

Because she receives perfectly there is in her no stain.

She is love without blemish, and gratitude without

self-complacency. All things praise her by being themselves

and by sharing in the Wedding Feast. She is the Bride and the

Feast and the Wedding.

The feminine principle in the world is the inexhaustible source

of creative realizations of the Father's glory. She is His

manifestation in radiant splendor! But she remains unseen,

glimpsed only by a few. Sometimes there are none who

know her at all.

Sophia is the mercy of God in us. She is the tenderness

with which the infinitely mysterious power of pardon

turns the darkness of our sins into the light of grace.

She is the inexhaustible fountain of kindness, and would

almost seem to be, in herself, all mercy. So she does in us

a greater work than that of Creation: the work of new being

in grace, the work of pardon, the work of transformation from

brightness to brightness tamquam a Domini Spiritu. She

is in us the yielding and tender counterpart of the power, justice

and creative dynamism of the Father.

 

IV. Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina.

Now the Blessed Virgin Mary is the one created being

who enacts and shows forth in her life all that is hidden in Sophia.

Because of this she can be said to be a personal manifestation

of Sophia, Who in Godc is Ousia rather than Person.

Natura in Mary becomes pure Mother. In her, Natura

is as she was from the origin from her divine birth. In Mary Natura

is all wise and is manifested as an all-prudent, all-loving, all-pure

person:

not a Creator, and not a Redeemer, but perfect Creature, perfectly

Redeemed, the fruit of all God's great power, the perfect expression

of wisdom in mercy.

It is she, it is Mary, Sophia, who in sadness and joy, with the full

awareness

of what she is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown

which is His Human Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created

nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God.

God enters into His creation. Through her wise answer, through her obedient

understanding, through the sweet yielding consent of Sophia, God enters

without publicity into the city of rapacious men.

She crowns Him not with what is glorious, but with

what is greater than glory: the one thing greater than

glory is weakness, nothingness, poverty.

She sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth

as poor and helpless, in His mission of inexpressible

mercy, to die for us on the Cross.

The shadows fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep.

Night embraces the silent half of the earth. A vagrant, a destitute

wanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A

homeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without

identifications, without even a number, a frail expendable exile

lies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world and

entrusts Himself to sleep.

 

 

 

 

--- John Metzger

--- riverjohn77