Bless you Lord of the heavens and the earth,
because you have hidden these things from the intelligent
and have revealed them to the lowly, mere children;
for that is what it pleased you to do…
Matthew 11: 25-26
Seeker,
How do YOU strain the critical from the clutter in the flotsam of worldwide wonderings?
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Thomas Merton
In our data-driven digital era,
despite our clever communication devices,
we seem ever more alienated from the ground of our being.
Cast adrift, we bob aimlessly
in an ocean of information
about everything…and about nothing.
So many voices, so many choices.
Where are we all going?
What does it all mean?
Though we spend much of our lives
climbing, taking charge, growing up and knowing more,
the way of wisdom moves in the opposite direction.
Not-knowing is the beginning of wisdom.
When you don’t know where you’re going,
you have to slow down.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T. S. Eliot
When at last you KNOW you do not know,
humble acceptance opens a door,
and wisdom enters with our willingness to be led.
In this age of instant messaging,
undivided, outward-focused presence is radical,
and listening itself makes a hospital of your heart.
As you realize that we are receivers not repositories,
you are liberated to loosen your grip on information,
and let wisdom take the helm.
Though you cannot hope to possess her,
Holy Wisdom beckons you
to take three steps down:
1. Come Down ─ be humbled.
Wisdom brings you down to size,
amid the lowly, not the lofty,
so her first casualty is always our conceit.
2. Slow Down ─ lighten your burden of expectation.
While information flashes from the keystrokes,
wisdom always takes her time
and makes herself available to the unhurried.
3. Grow Down ─ cease collecting and comparing.
Wisdom draws you out of your head,
closer to the ground,
to feel the truth with the soles your feet.
Like a playful child,
wisdom offers awkward questions
at inappropriate times.
It can be hard to distinguish the wise from the children.
Both are easily moved with astonishment or compassion.
Both speak plainly, from the heart, without guile.
Wisdom greets you when life takes your breath away,
when answers run aground, words fail,
and you revert to that curious child-like learner.
Planting your feet in the mud and soiling your hands,
wisdom speaks through your failings,
thriving on the frailties of your humanity.
Life is mostly forth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.
Adam Lindsay Gordon
But, are you sure it is wisdom you seek,
and not that endless stream of information
that promises quick answers to questions unasked?
Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.
The water that I will give will become in them a spring gushing up to eternal life.
John 4:13-14
Come Holy Spirit, Well of Wisdom, and finds us…
in the silence between the notes, in the stories behind the eyes,
in the terrors of our times, amid the groaning of the earth herself.
joe