2020.10.18 Wisdom. Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Wisdom is considered one of God’s unfathomable gifts.  This is a note on the first chapter of the biblical Book of Sirach the central theme of which is that Wisdom comes from God, was with God in the beginning, is of God, is a female figure, and is deeply connected with spirituality. Whew!     

But why is Wisdom “unfathomable”?  Well, I suppose because Divinity itself is unfathomable.

Back in the 1980s, I was the chaplain at an alcohol/drug rehab facility. I was giving a talk on Spirituality to the patient community and ventured into the topic of Wisdom and its role in recovery. I began with a phrase from the biblical book called Sirach: “To fear the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, or God./Higher Power” A young black man leapt to his feet, raised his fists and shouted: “What the hell do you know about wisdom, anyway—or God?” He called me inept and stupid. I froze. Unbidden, a surge of energy rose up inside me:  “Excuse me, sir, sit down right now. I have listened to you and others with respect. You owe me the same. So sit down and shut up!” He sat down—wisely. Whether this was a wise confrontation or not, I have no idea, but it surely was unfathomable and felt damn good-godly to me.
            
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Sister Stan (Stanislaus Kennedy), Irish Sister of Charity since 1958, wrote in Gardening the Soul. Soothing seasonal thoughts for jaded modern souls, 2001. Her entry for October 12, our traditional Columbus Day, now quite discredited, unless you are wise enough to hold the wonder of explorative adventure in your soul alongside modern historical skepticism about legends, is:

Wisdom is not knowing as well as knowing, and being at peace with that uncertainty. It is about awareness and it is about wonder. It is about stopping and noticing phenomena in the world around us—air, water, wind, light, gravity, birth, rocks, heartbeats—and appreciating and understanding them.   

To glean wisdom we must keep ourselves open and receptive and perceptive. Wisdom comes from boldness, from participation and tolerance, uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, suspicion, pain, suffering, joy, laughter, fun and love. Wisdom comes from our participation in and appreciation of all things in our mind, heart, body, and spirit.

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Who is wise? What is wise? Why be wise?  You could after all be a wise-arse or a wiseacre.

Some years ago my late great Jesuit Spiritual Director Pierre Wolff  wisely told a group of retreatants, eager for a clear Word from God: "If you want to know how you stand with God, then look at how you stand with your neighbors.” Simple, right?  Inside I thought: hopeful, uneasy, fearful, judgmental, ashamed, loving, longing, hopeful.  Simple?   

From ancient Persian wisdom: “How do you know God?” You should respond, ‘Because God is in my heart.’ Can we know ourselves if we do not know God? The real understanding of ourselves is our understanding of God.”

The Bible is called Holy exactly because it is a jumble of unfathomably interconnected paradoxes—all of them beloved in Godde. The biblical book called Ecclesiasticus (book of the Church) or The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, composed about 180 BCE, was not included in the Jewish canon, but considered canonical by the early Christian Church. Protestant reformers relegated it to Apocryphal writings—runners up. Hence!—Sirach was and is controversial, unfathomable, and obviously wise.  

Sirach makes the case that Wisdom is from the Lord God, insisting throughout: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning is Wisdom. . . . To fear the Lord is fullness of wisdom; she inebriates mortals with her fruits . . .”  (Sirach 1: 16) This line is scandalous. She? Inebriation as in drunkenness? Her fruits? Sex?  Unfathomable! Yet it was the energy that surged inside me and gave me courage enough to confront those in my path who would hold me back, turn deaf ears.
 
Wisdom inebriates mortals with her fruits. She inebriates mortals with her fruits.

HOLY WISDOM. HOLY WORD. Thanks be to God.

Oh, and what does Wisdom look like? Check your mirror, my friends.

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.