On Birth Days July 30th. It is once again Sophia’s birthday. Twenty-eight years ago today, Sophia arrived in the world as she was to live in it: small and delicate in her physical frame, powerful in her presence. Amidst all the danger and drama of the moment, little Sophia remained completely composed at the centre of a whirlwind of confusion. The words the midwife whispered into my ear in the operating theatre have a
Sophia 30.07.1991—17.01.2014 In the Jewish tradition, those seeking to give comfort to the bereaved ask on their behalf for the memory of the loved one to be a blessing. It is a wise saying. Five years have passed since Sophia
Sophia: January 17th In the car park, green things Push through bitumen to survive, While above, a winter sky of powdered jewels, Fra Angelico blue, waits for its angels. Suddenly your eyes, so blue themselves, looking up Are full of tears. There, in a wheelchair, in a car park, Amid the grime and weeds, You cried for the beauty of the sky. I cry thinking of it, thinking of the mind That thought the thoughts
The Annunciation and the Nativity The following poem is by a 16 year-old Sophia. It is taken from Loose Leaves, the sequence of poems she wrote after seeing The Medieval Imagination, an exhibition of illuminated manuscripts at the State Library in Melbourne. Ours is a broken world. The battle against disorder, which (as is symbolised in Sophie’s poem) includes suffering and death, is fought line by line, poem by poem, thought by beautiful thought. Sophie
Sophia’s Elegy, by Gershon Maller The first creative response to Sophia’s death was this, the lovely elegy written for her, and read at her interment in February 2014, by her friend, philosopher and poet, Dr. Gershon Maller. Sophia was buried with prayer and poetry, her casket strewn with rose petals. Elegy for Sophia by Gershon Maller You fell from what could not hold you as if shaken from the leaves of a book
I say your name ... For a long time after Sophia’s death, I could not write. Profound grief demands an endurance that seems to occupy all space. Last year, however, the process of working on Sophie’s website made it possible to begin to write again, and to write poetry. I have begun a collection of poems dedicated to Sophia (of which 33 have been written so far). This is how it begins; here
Wisdom ~ The Prize Sophia believed that one of the defining issues of our times is the increasing lack of a sense of the distinction between public and private worlds. Government intrusion into private behaviour and a corresponding intrusion of people’s private behaviour into the public space (social media is like an immersion in the collective id) are debasing both social life and intellectual endeavour. In the years since