Two faces of Wisdom

Her familiar face greets the world, shining the light of wisdom emerging from the subtle spiritual undercurrents of France soon after her bloody revolution for liberte. The meaning of her strong right arm lunging upward inviting the world's oppressed with her freedom light is obvious. She symbolizes the light of the world, a land of freedom for all, and a strong hopeful call to the world's oppressed. She is a beautiful brilliant beacon of hope - a message of wisdom the world has always desperately needed and now as much as ever. She is on the country's doorstep, the face we shine outward to the world. She is clearly the classical theological definition of wisdom - light, liberty and life itself.

At the other end of the continent, looming over a narrow street in Portland is an entirely different face of wisdom - Portlandia. Almost frightening at first, if only because of her steely hovering perch on an old badly deteriorating business building, she is crouching, pointing at whomever sees her while thrusting a trident outwardly in her left arm swung boldly behind her. She points to a darker, hidden inner watery realm, typically symbolized by the left hand. She is our subconscious, while Lady Liberty is our conscious. Both seek and require freedom.

As much as Lady liberty welcomes the world on the east coast of the U.S., the world's masses who struggle with worldly issues that have burdened and oppressed them, on the west coast Portlandia seems to call us out of our watery subconscious depths where the real enslavement is.  Her Neptunish stance, almost like a mermaid, calls us up from the depths of our inner enslavement.  She is reaching within as Liberty is reaching out.

How interesting that both these statues of wisdom, archetypally portrayed in the feminine persona, brace both shores of this land of freedom, a land of potential, still defining herself, still finding herself - first finding political and economic freedom and then finding inner spiritual, psychological freedom.

Both freedoms are wisdom's call. One is out there for all the world to see. The other is discovered on the way to a late evening meeting in an old building on a dark night. How appropriate. Wisdom shows up whenever we have eyes to see her and recognize her.