You know how once you buy a car, you start seeing that same kind of car everywhere? Its like your radar has been tuned to a different frequency. You swear that you never knew how many zippy sport-shift Scions were on the road until you had one.

Lately I’ve been studying Sophia, and she is everywhere! I picked up a book on creativity & spirituality by Matthew Fox — she was on the page I just happened to open. I’ve been interested in Buddhism lately, so I started reading a nice thick tome on Goddesses of India — and discovered Prajnaparamita & Tara….so parallel to Sophia & Mary. Sadie and I put up the gorgeous tapestries from Turkey she got on her trip…and she remembered Hagia Sophia, the incredible cathedral-mosque-museum dedicated to Holy Wisdom in Istanbul. On my way to Marylhurst to return library books I called my sister. She’s reading the controversial bestseller The Shack, in whose pages, guess who? Sophia appears!

It seems comforting, a little odd, but full of intention — the Universe’s intention, not my own. There’s that denial again. After all, I DID buy the Scion. She’s so much fun to drive.  I like to think of her less as aristocracy, and more as a tree graft. A tree? Yes. Me and trees. The love affair continues.

Here’s Merriam-Webster on scion: “a detached living portion of a plant (as a bud or shoot) joined to a stock in grafting and usually supplying solely aerial parts to a graft”. There’s some creepy parallel here if a carbon-consuming car is my jugular, so let’s skip ahead to how the definition is such a great metaphor…for Sophia.

When I was a kid in Baptist sunday school, we chanted “He is the vine / We are the branches” (complete with hand motions). Not being a 2nd century vineyard owner, I can’t explain exactly how the vine and branches work. But I get the general idea. If Lady Sophia is the Tree of Life, then her roots tap into The Source of Luminous Perfect Wisdom. When I put my palm against her branches, rest under her shade, sing her praises, I’m embraced by that wisdom. Some days I feel her flow in my veins. Sweet Sophia! (I mean that in a nice way). I don’t mind being grafted on.