She Was Always There: Sophia as a Story for Our Time

A Book Reading with Signe Eklund Schaefer

Signe Eklund Schaefer leads us into a heartfelt exploration of the great mystery that is Sophia. While Sophia is rightly seen as the living, moving being of universal wisdom and the archetypal feminine, Schaefer helps us to see her as more — as an expression of what humanity must rightfully become.

Living with a Question
“We should face that world (of the spirit) not with our opinions but with our questions,
indeed in a questioning mood and attitude.”
–Rudolf Steiner

In October 2021, Signe Schaefer shared Rudolf Steiner’s New Isis/Sophia Myth. Since then she has published a new book, She Was Always There – Sophia as a Story for Our Time (Steiner Books, June 2023), where she further explores the mystery of Sophia and the call this Divine being seems to be making to our times and to us as individuals. This new book is an example of how one person stayed with an emerging question over decades, allowing it to grow, and branch out, and evolve through study, exchanges with others, and personal ponderings. Signe will share with us aspects of her journey of discovery, and we will then have time to consider some of our own deep questions.

Signe Schaefer has been a long-time adult educator and was for many years the Director of Foundation Studies at Sunbridge College. She was the founding Director of a professional development training in Biography and Social Art. Since retiring, she has published three books: Why on Earth? Biography and the Practice of Human Becoming, I Give You My Word: Women’s Letters as Life Support, and most recently, She Was Always There – Sophia as a Story for Our Time. She also co-authored Ariadne’s Awakening: Taking up the Threads of Consciousness and co-edited More Lifeways. A mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, she now lives in Great Barrington, MA, with her husband Christopher.