As Sophia waved her tiny hand out the window as the car pulled in our driveway, I asked, “How was your drive?”
In her high-pitched eight-year-old voice: “I saw two bunnies!”
When she learned I had four dogs and two cats, her eyes lit up. “When can I meet them?”
Over the next hour, I introduced her to our furry family—from Nya, our 15-year-old faithful German Shepherd mix, to Sylvie, the energetic kitten who is our most recent addition.
While I have only known April Doner, Sophia’s mother, for just over six years and despite the fact that she is more than a decade my junior, she has become one of my wisest guides as I have slowly embraced her vision of weaving the many streams of social movements together.
April and Sophia have stopped in to see us on their summer vacation, a road trip that brought them from Chicago all the way to my home in south central Virginia.
As the blond-haired, blue-eyed little girl climbed out of the car, I felt George, that curious young steer, whispering: Pay attention. She has something to show you.
I am learning to recognize that voice. Sometimes it comes from more-than-human friends like George. Sometimes from insightful teens. Sometimes from an eight-year-old girl who has just spotted two bunnies.
Wonder-full Teens
Sophia’s arrival was the day after our end-of-summer celebration at our local state park with the students who helped us with the Appomattox listening project, which I wrote about previously.
While most of the students were swimming in the lake, Jackson and Abi, two of our youthful leaders, chose instead to hike along Lakeshore Trail. When they returned, Abi shared a Maple-leaf Viburnum berry she had collected.
“Is it safe to eat?”
“I have never heard of humans eating them, but the birds seem to like them,” I responded.
“Good to know. I’ll leave it for the birds,” Abi said.
“We saw a really cool tree,” Jackson said.
“Yeah, it was leaning over the water and really interesting. Anyone want to go see it?” Abi looked around at the wilting collection of adults and peers. No one seemed willing to brave the heat to see the tree, and I was stuck at the shelter waiting on my husband to arrive with the hot dogs.
I now regret not having gone to meet Abi’s special tree friend.
I have spent the entire summer with Abi, and as she shared what she found while in the woods, she lit up. Her introverted and quiet nature was overcome by her curiosity and love of the natural world.
I remember the first day I met her. She had come to volunteer in the pollinator garden. She was so careful to only remove the invasives and gently tended to the natives we were trying to nurture. She has consistently demonstrated a deep connection to the natural world.
Abi didn’t need anyone to teach her to care. She already knew how.
Neither did Jackson. He noticed the tree. Abi noticed the berry. They noticed things that the rest of us could have easily walked past.
And now, here was Sophia, barely out of the car, announcing that she had noticed two bunnies.
Curious Connections
I wonder whether Sophia will retain the natural love of the living world she already carries within her when she is Abi’s age.
Sophia comes by her love of the outdoors naturally. April, Sophia, and I attended the Protecting Mother Earth conference a few years ago together. While my husband and I opted for a hotel room, Sophia and her mother slept in a tent on the grounds of the event.
I was impressed that April drove cross-country with a six-year-old to sleep on the ground and show solidarity with the ancestral guardians of the land where we were gathered. She wanted to connect fully with the Indigenous activists from across the globe who were cultivating connections between a variety of global movements.
What a beautiful memory young Sophia will have of her childhood.
Perhaps more importantly, what a beautiful way to grow up—to have adults who not only cultivate your curiosity about the living world but enter into it with you.
The Cosmic Sophia
While my love of Sophia the child is rooted in my love of her amazing mother, there is another connection that I feel with this young blond girl.
A love of, and deep connection with her name.
I have loved the meaning of the word Sophia since my seminary days when I learned it is the Greek word for wisdom. In Proverbs, wisdom is personified as feminine. As a woman discerning a call to ministry in a Baptist seminary, this imagery was powerful and life-giving.
“Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?”— Proverbs 8:1
“When he [God] established the heavens, I [wisdom] was there…”— Proverbs 8:27
I came to see Sophia as a living, active presence, a guide—calling me into relationship with all creation.
Perhaps this is why the name Sophia feels so alive to me.
The biblical Sophia calls out. George approaches. Abi invites.
“Look.”
“Listen.”
“Come see.”
I see and hear Sophia’s presence everywhere when I choose to pay attention.
She is the voice that invites me to be astonished as I wander through the woods, never ceasing to amaze me with the beauty and healing I find there.
And she is also the wisdom that comes through children who have not yet forgotten how to wonder.
Perhaps that is what George was inviting me to see.
I had the privilege of walking with young Sophia and her mom along my woodland trails.
Sophia climbed into the treehouse, tracked a frog across the forest floor, and went to visit Old Lumpy, one of my wisest forest-dwelling trees.
She was doing what children do when we give them the freedom to wander.
Bringing it Home
My eldest child, blond-haired and blue-eyed, has always had that same love of the living world. I remember many frogs, insects, and excited bunny sightings.
Now in his early 30’s, I see him trying to retain his innate connection to the wild, working at our local State Park and facing the ever-mounting demands of adulthood.
I pray young Sophia, Jackson, and Abi find a way to grow up without growing disconnected from this way of seeing the world.
Because I know how easily that connection can be lost.
George reminded me that I was once that blond-haired, blue-eyed little girl. The one who wanted to hug the cows and run barefoot through fields of buttercups chasing butterflies.
I was Sophia once.
Unlike Abi, my desire to fit in slowly crowded out my curiosity about the natural world.
I traded my dirty bare feet for stylish sandals.
My love of plants and animals for boys.
The living world of trees, bugs and furry creatures for boardrooms and computer screens where my peers and I were all vying for the corner office.
I spent my teen, college, and young adult years largely oblivious to the natural world around me.
It wasn’t that I stopped loving the living world. I simply stopped noticing it.
More importantly, I stopped allowing it to nourish my soul.
Then, when my eldest child was roughly Sophia’s age, I entered Seminary. Through a course on Celtic Spirituality, my love of the natural world was reawakened alongside a realization of how healing this connection was for me.
Shortly thereafter, we purchased a heavily wooded 23-acre tract of land that is now my full-time home.
Looking back, I wonder if I was not so much discovering something new as remembering something old.
My youngest daughter called me this week from her home in the bustling city of Philadelphia. She had gone out on her own to find a wild space to wander.
She spends her days in boardrooms and on computer screens, but she never forgot her wild child experiences.
The Invitation
Maybe that is the hope—not that we escape the modern world, but that we don’t allow it to convince us that the living world is somewhere else – foreign or inaccessible to us.
Maybe we can grow older without growing away from the part of us that still notices the bunny, follows the frog, wants to climb into the treehouse, or picks ripe berries from the vine.
That is my hope: that we all grow younger in how we engage in the natural world.
Perhaps, I should not have been surprised that the youngest community members in Appomattox chose protecting the earth as their deepest longing.
What would change if we learned to see again with the eyes of the literal eight-year-old Sophia—and with the eyes of Sophia, Wisdom herself?
The two Sophias may not be as different as they first appear.
One waves from the back seat.
The other calls, inviting me to pay attention and to gain understanding.
One wants to meet every dog and cat she encounters.
The other invites me into deeper relationship with all creation.
Both are calling me out of my head and back into the living world.
Both are inviting me to become curious again.
Perhaps wisdom doesn’t always arrive as an answer. Sometimes she simply points and says, “Look!”
And sometimes, if we are willing to follow, she leads us into the wild.
Maybe this is what George was trying to tell me from the beginning.
Pay attention.
The children have something to show you.
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