Notre Dame and Sophia (Part 2)

Like the zero point at Notre Dame in Paris, the divine feminine represents the still point, the center from which all life springs. The eclipse upon which she stands, is the place from which life emerges. Not from the past, but from deeply within this moment, it is brought forth from the unknown to the known, through the gateway of the soul, into creation. New life flows from the heart of all-that-is in purity, peace, and love.

Sophia – Woman from Revelation

Several years ago I spent Christmas in San Antonio. We sat in a festive church listening to the mesmerizing beauty of a pipe organ playing carols a few days before the holiday. People were flowing in, lighting a candle for Mother Mary at a side altar, and drifting out again. We got up and exited through a side door. As we approached the curb, a man began calling from behind us. “Senorita! Senorita!” I turned around as he took the elbow of the woman behind me and began to steer her toward the back of the church. Without thinking about what I was doing, I turned and followed them. They went through an opening in a high wall behind the church. And there was a statue of the woman from Revelation, in a walled garden, hidden behind the church.

As I later reflected on the experience, I got the message that she didn’t want to be outside of the church any more, which of course is what brings us to Notre Dame. In my last post I wrote about how the fire was a cleansing of the old view of the feminine in Christianity, which created the way for something new to emerge.

I believe the woman from Revelation is Sophia (Greek for Wisdom). In Proverbs 8:22,  “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work (or “way,” scholars aren’t sure of the word.)…” Many of the people I’ve spoken with have not ever heard of her. When I explain, they’re astonished.

She continues on in Proverbs 8:32 asking us to listen to her, watch for her, wait for her, “For he who finds me finds life.” You would think this might be a major subject in religion, since she is the way to life. The philosophers (philo=lover, sophia=wisdom) of old spent their lives seeking a relationship with her in order to cultivate wisdom.

We live in a culture that is oriented around a patriarchal religion in which God is a male supreme being and the feminine is, um, let’s say, less than. In order for a new paradigm to emerge in which she is elevated to equal status with the masculine, we need a new vision of our religious foundation. I’m not talking about rewriting the Bible, but about looking at it with new eyes. Like the fact that Sophia is already there and says she’s been here since before the Earth was created.

This isn’t just about changing our view of religion, but it impacts us all personally as well. Why? Because the world in it’s current conflicting chaos is freaking a lot of us out. The future appears frightening at best and catastrophic at worst. Young people are in a chronic state of distress over their future and who can blame them. The old way isn’t working. We all need to rise to the occasion and turn to the divine feminine to learn how to live in a new way and what our part is in that new world.

Anyone who has been following me for any length of time knows that I’ve been on this path of inquiry for a while now. I feel this deep longing within. A calling to step up and do what I can to help discover a new narrative in which embodied love is the ground upon which we stand. There is no doubt in my mind that Sophia steered me to the walled garden behind that San Antonio church because she wanted me to write about her being done with the old story. Now is the time. She is emerging from the unconscious, coming out from the dark shadows of the church into the light, and she wants to be in a relationship with us.

 

 

Notre Dame is Burning: Clearing the Way for a New Emergence

Zero Point – Paris By Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33980822

The live stream of Notre Dame on fire was at the top of my Facebook newsfeed on April 15. My stomach sank as the tears began streaming down my face. I remembered the awe and wonder I felt on that day so many years ago when I first visited the cathedral.

I went downstairs and turned on CNN. Wolf Blitzer was speaking with a Parisian reporter as she stood near the burning church. But, I was having trouble hearing her, because my attention was being drawn to the faint sound of singing in the background. I strained to listen past her words, longing for her to stop talking. Wolf obviously felt the same way. He asked her to be quiet and to turn the camera toward the crowd. Their song arose, in unison, in harmony, their grief palpable in their sombre voices. My hair stood on end as I watched the cathedral dedicated to Our Lady burn.

I couldn’t stop weeping. Like others I heard speak with Wolf, I was caught off guard by my tears. Some grief was triggered deep inside that my mind couldn’t quite comprehend. We watched orange flames dance against the black night sky. The French wept and we wept with them. Their loss somehow also felt like ours. It was coming to our attention that we cared more than we knew and prayed, regardless of our religious affiliations, for the building to stand strong. For the towers to hold fast to those bells and not let them go. For the art to be saved.

Once the tears passed, as a depth psychologist, searching for meaning in the seemingly meaningless, and sense in the senseless, I sat quietly to learn what I could. The fire was a cleansing of the inside of the church, and we were witnessing, like Lot’s wife, the destruction of an outdated view of the feminine in Christianity. We were mourning the loss of something we couldn’t name, believing this was a tragedy, afraid we were losing an important icon to the feminine.

We have witnessed the inner destruction of the old version of the feminine in Christianity. And now…

The space has been created, within an old religious structure, for something new to be built. A fresh state of consciousness is emerging as an old story is transforming, and the divine feminine is rising right into the heart of Christianity. Where?

The words of the French ambassador came back to me. He told Wolf, as the cathedral burned, the zero point of Paris is right in front of Notre Dame. It’s the center point from which everything in Paris, and even France, is measured. Right there, in the heart of the City of Love, a new divine feminine is coming to consciousness.

We’ve witnessed the Assumption of Mary as an honoring of the mother of Jesus. Then there was the elevation of Mary Magdalene as the bride, mother, and heir to the spiritual legacy of Jesus. What then is coming to consciousness now? The transformation of the stories of the Marys has paved the way for the next version of the story.

It’s taken me until now to grasp the full significance of what is emerging.

I can see from my own dreams and symbolic work that that in order to shift from the physical to the spiritual, and a new story, that we must transform our perception of what we are. If we experience ourselves as defined by the body, then we remain caught in duality and separation. The correlation is that Mary is the mother, but Jesus said, he was in the world, not of it. If we see ourselves as embodied spiritual beings, which is what he was referring to, then we identify with the transcendent aspect of ourselves, the ground of our being. Then, the spiritual mother of Jesus is the divine feminine, Sophia.

As such, the new story for Notre Dame, the cathedral dedicated to Our Lady, Our Mother, is centered on Sophia, Wisdom. The divine feminine is being elevated to a place of equality with the Father. She is the Holy Spirit in the Trinity–Father, Mother, and Christ–and must be returned to her rightful place as the Mother of All.

I am standing on a huge map of the state I was born in. I’m pointing to where the capital is and say, “That’s where I was born.” I walk away and encounter another guy. He looks at me and throws and eclipse at me. It hits me between the eyes.

I awake from the dream feeling perplexed. As I process the dream I realize I’m being told that I wasn’t born in the physical world, but it was a spiritual union that gave birth to me. Not the story of me, but to the essence that is the truth of who I am, the ground of my being. When I researched the eclipse and sixth chakra, I discovered that it was associated with birth.

The cleansing fire of Notre Dame was witnessed by the world. It’s deeper meaning was intuited by the soul, which is why the tears fell for so many of us. The space has been created for a the emergence of a new story of Sophia, the divine feminine. A seed has been planted at the Zero Point in the City of Love. We all are being called to play a part in remembering and resurrecting unconditional love and returning to an awareness of the sanctity of all life.