Finding the Light Paul Kingsnorth’s* stunning poem, Hymn of Entry, is everything Sophia would wish in a work for Sophia’s Notebook.The poem fulfills each of the principles laid out on the splashdown page of this website (principles which Sophia herself lived so fully): Be brave. Seek truth. Love wisdom. Live beauty. Courage. Truthfulness. Wisdom. Beauty. How necessary these are, how precious, and how rare. In its fierce loveliness, Paul’s poem really does speak to the
“Sophie came into the world as herself…” July 30th. It’s Sophia’s birthday. As always, I find myself thinking of the parameters of her life: birth, death, life’s cosmic bookends in this sublunary world. How does one define a life? Sophia had 22 years of it, 22 years of life. Keats had 25. Dante’s Beatrice, 24. The numbers tell us nothing. And everything. So young. So young. It hurts to think of it. How does one
Spoken Soul Some lights burn true, whatever the darkness. Sophia 30.07.1991--17.01.2014 Out of the Burning Bury me in garlands Of burning paper With all my pollen sparks of steel Sophia Nugent-Siegal Out of the burning fire Truth remains true Its generative spark whirls up Into
Bearing Witness to the Truth Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.
July 30th, 2021 It is July 30th once again, Sophia’s birthday. Sophia would be 30 this year. Thirty. It is an inconceivable number, inconceivable that it must come and go without her, inconceivable that so many birthdays have come and gone likewise. Thirty. Yet it is the sweet-faced girl who looks out at us from images of her that Sophia will now forever be. Perhaps there is an unlikely fittingness to this—for though Sophia (like