Sophia’s Table: Women’s Wisdom in Five Voices is a collaboration among five women (Kathy Zamonski, Linda A. Marshall, Dodi Matheny Wozniak, Marty Davis Cottrill, Karen Ander Francis) participating in a contemplative writing group. We are five ordinary women with lives that hold the myriad joys and challenges comprising the human experience. All of us find writing to be central to leading healthy, balanced lives; to gaining fresh perspective; and to finding meaning and purpose. Each of us has a distinct voice, pitched and toned by her unique life experience.
In this account from the Book of Proverbs, Wisdom sets a table:
Come eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity and live, walk in the way of insight.
Proverbs 9:5-6 NRSV
Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom, and is a feminine noun.
It is clear in the Proverbs passage that Wisdom is a woman who set a table and asked guests to join her. The table is an age-old gathering place where women traditionally have nourished and refreshed family and friends. It is often where we sit to share stories and solve problems over a cup of coffee or tea.
Sophia invites people from the desert into the cool shade of her home…a metaphor for the soul–a numinous, refreshing place shaded from the glaring light and heat of the sun. At her table, we balance the exterior life of the mind with an interior life of the soul–stepping out of the bright heat of reason into the cool shade of intuition.
Like mellow wine, insight ferments in quiet reflection on our life experiences and emerges from profound knowing and trusting what we know. Insight is drawn from the deep well of inner stillness where we meet the Divine within us, the Source and Font of Life and Love, the very essence of who we are. Sophia bids us to discover and trust our own innate wisdom.
Sophia’s Table Reviews:
Reading Sophia’s Table, you feel as if you’re talking with an old friend. Such deep sharing. Warm and insightful. It triggered some thinking for me, and made me look at my own life differently. ~ Cynthia R.
Kudos to all of you. Sophia’s Table is awesome! It is truly remarkable the way you captured the human experience–as a daughter, a wife, a mother, an aunt, a survivor, a woman. I laughed. I cried. It moved me. ~ Deanna H.
Reviews of Linda’s Contribution:
…just spent a delightful early Sunday morning with you via Sophia’s Table. I’m touched by the vulnerability, the risk you take ‘in letting others into’ the hidden recesses. Thank you for your lifetime of unfolding. ~ Diana S.
I’m in awe of how you’ve taken your experiences of personal growth and translated them into ways of relating to family and working with others. ~ Martha C.
You are incredibly open and honest. I think so many mothers could relate to what you wrote but wouldn’t dare say it. I think as mothers we all have things we regret and just have to live with. I know I do. You are an inspiration to just own what is real. ~ Barb K.
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