Wisdom is feminine. At least according to many religious and mystical traditions. In fact, Wisdom is often portrayed as a female being. One who is both human and holy. "One wing soars in heaven, one wing sweeps the earth, and the third flies all around us," says Hildegard von Bingen, 11th century mystic, in her Prayer to Sophia. And Sophia, meaning wisdom in Greek, is perhaps the most well known personification of wisdom in the West and Christianity. Sophia is Wisdom Incarnate. She is Divine truth, embodied here on earth.
And this is precisely what wisdom is. Wisdom lives and breathes the reconciliation of opposites. Wisdom seeks to marry what is adversarial and paradoxical. She unifies. And in her unification she births wise consciousness. Not merely a wise way of knowing, but a wise way of being. Wisdom dwells where humanity and divinity, knowledge and experience, beauty and suffering, discipline and surrender, heart and mind, body and soul, separateness and connectedness...and you and I...are reconciled.
But Wisdom cannot find you if you turn away from one side in favor of the other. It is only when you stay painfully intimate with the tension that something miraculous may happen: The two seemingly incompatible forces may stop battling long enough to gaze at one another and realize they are, in fact, long lost lovers. Separated eons ago. And upon recognition, their love is passionately rekindled. From this union, a new consciousness is born. From this union, Wisdom is born. Wherever you have reconciled an opposition, it is there you become wise. It is there you bring Sophia to us all.
Art | Luo Li Rong