My Conversation with Sophia: Reflections on Wisdom’s Contemplative Path

In the Bible, a mysterious Lady Wisdom appears in many guises and dominates in the “Wisdom Books” of the Old Testament and Apocrypha. But just what is this spirit that is so central to all of creation? In My Conversation with Sophia, author William Z. Shetter shares an imagined conversation with Sophia, the personification of wisdom.

Through this conversation, Shetter addresses how this ancient wisdom speaks to us today by exploring twenty-six facets of wisdom that include such subjects as attentiveness, simplicity, growth, humility, grace, and compassion. My Conversation with Sophia shows that wisdom is not the amassing of knowledge, but rather, it is insight. True wisdom is not only a matter of the mind but of the heart as well.

Shetter explains how wisdom’s timeless core is alive in the form of the wisdomlight that is at the center of all of us. We explore our own wisdom path in a spirit of contemplation—reflecting attentively on the depth of what our experience is telling us. As Sophia opens an awareness of the centrality of wisdom in the world’s great religions and ethical systems, she provides a deeper understanding of wisdom as the divine breath of all the great sacred paths.

William Z. Shetter takes the reader into the metaphorical and mystical realms of life as smoothly as gliding across a still lake in a canoe. His Conversation with Wisdom gently leads us all into dialogue with the ineffable sage that moves within history and beyond it. It is a tremendous springboard for an individual or group on a journey of deepening spirituality.
—Melanie Supan Groseta, Benedictine Oblate and Spiritual Director