To Believe... In publishing each new work for Sophia’s Notebook, a corresponding poem (or poems) is selected from Sophia’s own body of work as an accompaniment. Why? Because, as the award in her name highlights, Sophia—that born historian—believed that culture (in particular, art and literature) represents an ongoing conversation across time. As T. S. Eliot stated in his seminal essay on literary tradition, the significance of any poet must be interpreted in terms of the
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
There is a burning in the garden… Two of Sophia’s poems were printed in the journal of creative and spiritual exploration, Jesus the Imagination, published by the US Center for Sophiological Studies, Angelico Press (Vol Vl: MMXXll, pp 92-93). Sophiology is premised on the idea of divine wisdom. Usually conceptualised in female terms, divine wisdom has links to the concept in Jewish mysticism of the Shekhinah or dwelling place. In a sense, to search for wisdom is
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