Be wise. Speak wisely. Act wisely. Practice Wisdom.
Wisdom in biblical parlance is a holy figure, a powerful symbolic figure, usually portrayed in feminine form and voice, who basically guides the whole enchilada of developing faith between Divinity and Humanity. Big job!
For Jews Wisdom (Hochmah) is found instructing the people of YHWH in the Torah to bind the law of love for God into their hearts as a constant guide for all they do.(Deut 6:6-8, Psalm 19)
For Christians Jesus Christ is the Wisdom of God’s Spirit (Sophia) in human flesh, quite like binding divinity to your heart. (John 1:1-18)
To be wise the thoughts of your heart must be congruent with the words of your mouth and the actions of your body.
Wisdom is not knowledge alone. Wisdom is the integration of knowledge from without with experience from within.
Quakers are all over this one.
Wisdom guides the integration process. She is Who gets us through the worst and best of times. Holy Week for Christians is both. Wisdom hold it all together, keeps us whole and holy. (She actually is spiritual velcro.)
Pray. Ask. Follow.
Showing posts with label Biblical Wisdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biblical Wisdom. Show all posts
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
2011.04.03 A Day with Teen Girls in Boston
One way to spruce up Lent, if you so need, is to banish sombriety (yes, I made that one up!) and spend the day with two 15 year old girls in a big city.
One of these two enchanting teens is my grand daughter Gillian. She has reached five feet and is statuesque with pride, having anticipate a life worse-than-death-as-short.
Just getting on the red line subway was an adventure. Everything was an adventure even if it wasn’t really new. The two giggled their way along city streets.
They walked ahead of me as if they knew where they were going. I got to watch their Gilly Hicks butts swinging along, perky. If it weren’t for the color (not flesh colored) of the tight leggings (all the rage) you’d never know they had a thing on.
Some guy called “Hey cutie” to Gillian. This inspired a flurry of hysterical giggles—embarrassment and thrill all at once. I hadn’t seen the man but she said he was sitting in a chair on the sidewalk.
Each girl had some money. Grammy treated for lunch and took cellphone photos of them, their heads tilted toward one another, mouths fixed on straws as they sucked up their twin strawberry frappes.
Gillian asked if it were rude to noisily suck up the remainder of the frappe with the straw. I said go for it. If it’s delicious, delightful, get as much of it as you can. They slurped, pleased and innocent as suckling infants. My own motherly love knew no bounds as I took in their mutual delight. Eden joy!
After ogling the scant overpriced putative clothing options, they found an “everything” shop and purchased souvenirs of Boston, selected carefully and with conversation about what would be just right for Mom, Dad, siblings and their grandparental hosts.
Grampy and I got little duckies and a panoramic postcard of the Boston skyline. Mom got a rubber bracelet “Superstar” and younger sister one that said “Spoiled.” For themselves they bought the same woven pink cord bracelet— a cut above rubber.
These girls are nice girls. They have soul because both have resisted the temptation to be mean in order to belong.
The highlight of the day was the trip to the ladies room at the lunch place. On the wall were wise or witty quotes, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Charles Manson, and more.
They came rushing out of the bathroom wanting pens to write quotes. “But we don’t know any quotes! Can you give us some?”
I jotted down one of my favorites: “I have set before you life and death. Choose life” paraphrased from Deuteronomy 30:15. “That’s great Grammy!” They never asked what Deuteronomy was but raced back to the bathroom to write themselves, and a little of God’s wisdom, onto the wall.
That’s how faith-in-memory happens—and then gets written over and over.
A day with nice girls in a buzzing big city is enlivening and therefore holy.
One of these two enchanting teens is my grand daughter Gillian. She has reached five feet and is statuesque with pride, having anticipate a life worse-than-death-as-short.
Just getting on the red line subway was an adventure. Everything was an adventure even if it wasn’t really new. The two giggled their way along city streets.
They walked ahead of me as if they knew where they were going. I got to watch their Gilly Hicks butts swinging along, perky. If it weren’t for the color (not flesh colored) of the tight leggings (all the rage) you’d never know they had a thing on.
Some guy called “Hey cutie” to Gillian. This inspired a flurry of hysterical giggles—embarrassment and thrill all at once. I hadn’t seen the man but she said he was sitting in a chair on the sidewalk.
Each girl had some money. Grammy treated for lunch and took cellphone photos of them, their heads tilted toward one another, mouths fixed on straws as they sucked up their twin strawberry frappes.
Gillian asked if it were rude to noisily suck up the remainder of the frappe with the straw. I said go for it. If it’s delicious, delightful, get as much of it as you can. They slurped, pleased and innocent as suckling infants. My own motherly love knew no bounds as I took in their mutual delight. Eden joy!
After ogling the scant overpriced putative clothing options, they found an “everything” shop and purchased souvenirs of Boston, selected carefully and with conversation about what would be just right for Mom, Dad, siblings and their grandparental hosts.
Grampy and I got little duckies and a panoramic postcard of the Boston skyline. Mom got a rubber bracelet “Superstar” and younger sister one that said “Spoiled.” For themselves they bought the same woven pink cord bracelet— a cut above rubber.
These girls are nice girls. They have soul because both have resisted the temptation to be mean in order to belong.
The highlight of the day was the trip to the ladies room at the lunch place. On the wall were wise or witty quotes, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Charles Manson, and more.
They came rushing out of the bathroom wanting pens to write quotes. “But we don’t know any quotes! Can you give us some?”
I jotted down one of my favorites: “I have set before you life and death. Choose life” paraphrased from Deuteronomy 30:15. “That’s great Grammy!” They never asked what Deuteronomy was but raced back to the bathroom to write themselves, and a little of God’s wisdom, onto the wall.
That’s how faith-in-memory happens—and then gets written over and over.
A day with nice girls in a buzzing big city is enlivening and therefore holy.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Memoir Musings Part Four: Lady Wisdom
It's TAX day! Some of us enjoy the privilege of paying taxes that others who can't pay may enjoy needed services provided the government manages tax and service with equity and generosity in balance. If you can swallow that sentence whole and digest it without much argument you're in balance yourself!
One of my favorite biblical characters turned out to be Lady Wisdom, spirit of creativity and formation. Wisdom is portrayed as the feminine face of God, God’s sidekick in all things. Without Wisdom you don’t get very far in life. I’d valued wisdom, the integration of knowledge with experience, but had often confused it with bookishness, reading more than I digested and way more than I could possibly use—or integrate.
Biblical Wisdom calls us to “lay aside immaturity” (Prov 7:6a) She invites us to the table to eat of the meal she has prepared and drink of the wine she has mixed. She confirmed for me my principal reason for wanting to be a priest.
Wisdom was female now. I couldn’t afford to be without her, apocryphal or not. I prayed for ordination and for Wisdom, my vocational arc increasingly bending like a birch toward a truth I trusted: that all life is sacred, sacramental, everything a visible sign of an invisible grace, everyone holy.
As I read about Wisdom, I learned she had many fine attributes, more than her Boss in fact. One of her qualities listed in the Book of Wisdom is shrewdness. I loved that. Shrewd is related to the now obsolete shrew, something I once heard my father call my mother. Shrewdness enables someone to make astute judgments sometimes without cold hard facts. It’s like cunning and maybe wily, which brings me straight to the holiness of many biblical women who used their wiles to seduce dangerous men and eliminate (murder) them as enemies of the plans of God. May not be the best ethics or theology but in a power-happy world what can you expect even if you don’t approve? Today the same.
Wisdom, shrewd and wily, also seemed like a divine kind of mother to me, one who trains her children in survival skills, who teaches all her children wisdom, and fills them with joy. I also read: “At first she will walk with them on tortuous paths; she will bring fear and dread upon them and will torment them by her discipline until she trusts them.” (Sirach 4: 17)
What kind of mother was that? Well, maybe Mother Church. She could fill me with dread and fear and torture me with her closed doors. When would I be trusted? I wondered as I wandered.
All I could do was keep on, keep on, keep on. I got lots of support, lots of “milk” along the way. But the wilderness could be lonely. Friends and family got sick of my laments and my desires, to say nothing of my radicalized politics.
Determination to achieve my goal made me gritty.
As the years went by I reared four children, went to seminary, did everything in the parish church that I could except join Altar Guild—enough washing and ironing at home. I developed spiritual muscle. I grew tall inside. Adversity, not comfort, shapes souls.
A tender sorrow accompanied me, but it wasn’t bitter and no longer overwhelmed me. My own true voice began to sound more and more like the voice of divine Wisdom I’d heard from time to time inside myself.
That inner voice had awakened me and set me on the wilderness path in the first place. It spoke one day when I was baking chocolate chip cookies, batch # 1 million. They were good and brought pleasure and I was a good mother, but God-in-me gave me Wisdom who said, “Why are you doing this?”
Now I was in the wilderness trying to answer that simple shrewd question, trying to make it to the promised land which I thought was ordination.
Once along my “prayerful” obsessive way Wisdom interrupted me saying, “Lyn, I don’t care if you’re ordained.” Insulted as I felt, She made me laugh. Wisdom can be fresh—funny with a bite. But I suppose she takes her assignments seriously.
One of my favorite biblical characters turned out to be Lady Wisdom, spirit of creativity and formation. Wisdom is portrayed as the feminine face of God, God’s sidekick in all things. Without Wisdom you don’t get very far in life. I’d valued wisdom, the integration of knowledge with experience, but had often confused it with bookishness, reading more than I digested and way more than I could possibly use—or integrate.
Biblical Wisdom calls us to “lay aside immaturity” (Prov 7:6a) She invites us to the table to eat of the meal she has prepared and drink of the wine she has mixed. She confirmed for me my principal reason for wanting to be a priest.
Wisdom was female now. I couldn’t afford to be without her, apocryphal or not. I prayed for ordination and for Wisdom, my vocational arc increasingly bending like a birch toward a truth I trusted: that all life is sacred, sacramental, everything a visible sign of an invisible grace, everyone holy.
As I read about Wisdom, I learned she had many fine attributes, more than her Boss in fact. One of her qualities listed in the Book of Wisdom is shrewdness. I loved that. Shrewd is related to the now obsolete shrew, something I once heard my father call my mother. Shrewdness enables someone to make astute judgments sometimes without cold hard facts. It’s like cunning and maybe wily, which brings me straight to the holiness of many biblical women who used their wiles to seduce dangerous men and eliminate (murder) them as enemies of the plans of God. May not be the best ethics or theology but in a power-happy world what can you expect even if you don’t approve? Today the same.
Wisdom, shrewd and wily, also seemed like a divine kind of mother to me, one who trains her children in survival skills, who teaches all her children wisdom, and fills them with joy. I also read: “At first she will walk with them on tortuous paths; she will bring fear and dread upon them and will torment them by her discipline until she trusts them.” (Sirach 4: 17)
What kind of mother was that? Well, maybe Mother Church. She could fill me with dread and fear and torture me with her closed doors. When would I be trusted? I wondered as I wandered.
All I could do was keep on, keep on, keep on. I got lots of support, lots of “milk” along the way. But the wilderness could be lonely. Friends and family got sick of my laments and my desires, to say nothing of my radicalized politics.
Determination to achieve my goal made me gritty.
As the years went by I reared four children, went to seminary, did everything in the parish church that I could except join Altar Guild—enough washing and ironing at home. I developed spiritual muscle. I grew tall inside. Adversity, not comfort, shapes souls.
A tender sorrow accompanied me, but it wasn’t bitter and no longer overwhelmed me. My own true voice began to sound more and more like the voice of divine Wisdom I’d heard from time to time inside myself.
That inner voice had awakened me and set me on the wilderness path in the first place. It spoke one day when I was baking chocolate chip cookies, batch # 1 million. They were good and brought pleasure and I was a good mother, but God-in-me gave me Wisdom who said, “Why are you doing this?”
Now I was in the wilderness trying to answer that simple shrewd question, trying to make it to the promised land which I thought was ordination.
Once along my “prayerful” obsessive way Wisdom interrupted me saying, “Lyn, I don’t care if you’re ordained.” Insulted as I felt, She made me laugh. Wisdom can be fresh—funny with a bite. But I suppose she takes her assignments seriously.
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