sophia, serendipity & synchronicity

i'm noticing a pattern:  amazing conversations with strangers.  they all happen to be wise women in their 60's+...in a shop, on the sidewalk, today happened to be in the grocery store aisle.

the closest way i can describe it is if you've ever looked at the 2D books with images that, if you look long enough, suddenly a 3D image appears.  one moment you are going about a very ordinary existence and the next an entire window of wisdom opens before you.

today i came around the corner of an aisle with my cart and what i noticed first was her peaceful expression and radiant skin from the inside-out.  most people around her were in a hurry, tense, angry-seeming almost, distracted at the very least, not at all at home in themselves.  she was in a motorized scooter and had her silver-grey hair pulled into a bun and held in place with a black stick-pin.  she stood out from the crowd in that she was very much at home in her own skin with a beautiful transparency about her. 

as we got to visiting i learned that she is named after a site in France known for miracles (Lourdes) and is almost 82 years old.  she does not have internet or tv except to watch documentaries and Great Courses dvd's.  "i am eternally curious about the world," she said, "i have a globe in my house; there is a such a big world out there.  you must come over and look at my art sometime."  

then she seemed to look straight into my soul.  she made peaceful but purposeful eye contact and said in what felt like a prophetic voice, "there is information and there is knowledge but if we want to know wisdom, we must listen.  we must listen to the silence. keep loving and listening to the silence.  it's the rests between the notes, not the notes, that you must listen to.  then the spheres can sing through you..."

as i listened, she added, "...life happens to us all, but to let it make us beautiful, we must listen and let ourselves be smoothed like clay, like marble...smoothing our rough edges, out of this a sculpture will emerge...i believe in sophia (wisdom), serendipity, and synchronicity and in the collective we, in good direction."

we talked about music, and painting and especially about collage and what the process can reveal to us, to our souls.  "it's the juxtapositions of life" she said.  "it's very important to process and to share in these ways and what they reveal, how they speak to us."  

and we talked about culture, spirituality.  "i've lived here in this country since 1949" she said, before tapping on my shirt at heart level, "this is where home is.  in you and (then tapping her own chest) in here.  yes, this is home.  would you rather be a very rich but inwardly poor person or a poor but inwardly wealthy one? it is all here, in the heart. we, we are very wealthy souls, you and i. the spheres will sing through you."

i think we talked for about 30 minutes as if we'd known each other all our lives. "if we have hope, we have everything.  if we can believe something can be better, it can always be better." and then she went on her way to buy bread and i went for the item i had turned around for, as if it was all orchestrated for us to meet somehow.  

our conversation was normal in some regard and so was she.  she had a grocery list and shopping bags like everyone else. but she also exuded a very special out-of-time and space energy that left me feeling warm, peaceful, encouraged in all the ways i didn't know i needed to be encouraged.  afterwards, as i went back to the more 2D sights and sounds around me, i wondered, "was that an angel in aisle 7?" (she had even joked about "desperately loving coffee because she 'didn't yet have her wings' " because Lourdes certainly felt like one.