O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Laura Sweeney
WHERE I FIND SOPHIA THE FEMININE FACE OF GOD
Benet House Retreat Center & St. Mary Monastery, Rock Island, IL
In the face of the women in this prayer circle palms up resting on thighs: a high school principal
a hospice chaplain, a volunteer Befriender at Unity Point Hospital, a family practitioner whose shawl I admire as she describes her accident in the Bahamas. A wave crashed down on her thigh rendered her wheel-chair and walker-bound for months, her right leg shriveled.
I see Sophia in the face of the sisters who prepared our soup supper, chicken noodle, cheese and crackers. And the sister who turned the pages of my vesper book, an immigrant from Switzerland, a doctor of letters who tenured early at Urbana, became a lawyer for the Church. You sing beautifully she whispered as I blended my voice with the sisters behind me.
I see Sophia in the face of the sister who advised as I walked down the hallway Why don’t you stay a few days to reflect on direction, if you take communion I won’t tell. And in the face of two lay women feisty about priests who chastise them for signing the cross the wrong way while they lay hands on the sick and dying.
And next to them a woman who asked if we’ve considered Mary Magdalene a confidant of Christ. Nothing in the Bible suggests she was a prostitute. And the face of the 70-year-old who dreamt of Jesus coming over the hill upon her death. And in the face of the crone image in the St. John’s Bible. I have to look like that the family practitioner gasped before I have wisdom?
I see Sophia in the face of a news columnist excited by her collection about speaking in tongues.
And in the chaplain who admits the church is in debate about the LGBTQ+ community but anyone who calls forth the Spirit is welcome. Or the sister who described her father’s death his dog was the first to know he passed. And in the face of a woman wearing the stress of divorce.
And as these women join in stanzas of this trance, we breathe in Sophia breathe out distractions.
About the writer:
Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in Iowa and Illinois. She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist’s Conference in Oslo, Norway. Her poems and prose appear in seventy plus journals and twenty-five anthologies in the States, Canada, Britain, Indonesia, and China. Her recent awards include a scholarship to the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. She is a PhD candidate in English Studies/Creative Writing at Illinois State University.
Image: Advent (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2025. Public domain via MidJourney AI.
Other work by Laura Sweeney available at O:JA&L:
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