I met a woman once, her name was Sophia. Her hair was the color of the winter moon and her laugh as light as the splash of a running stream. When she spoke, she held her eyes wide and their color was the blue of a cloudless sky in June when it seems the atmosphere has thinned so completely that you could float right up off of the ground where you stand. I remember the way she used her hands when she spoke, gathering the air around her as if to keep the words close by where I could hold them for just a moment and perhaps understand. I see her sitting cross legged, her back against a tree, her eyes moist with appreciation for a flower, the laugh of a nearby child, or a drink of cool water. She knew the magic of words, conjuring complete meaning with a poem or a phrase. She took absolute delight in simply being .
Albert Einstein once said that there are two ways to live, the first as if nothing were magic, the second, as if everything were. Sophie would have understood the wisdom and the truth in that. She taught me the way of living wisely, of finding rest in the understanding that nothing can be searched out which is not there to be found in your own heart.
