What is wisdom?
Knowledge tempered by love. I like that definition and I do not know where I got it, so I can’t give credit. How about experience softened by love? That works too. Perhaps both together work as an amorphous definition. Anyway I am feeling a bit wistful today because I am packing up my things and making a move. Forgive me for being sentimental.
It is very easy for me to use the past as a blunt instrument with which to punish myself. I look at mistakes I have made and curse myself for choosing one way; when, if I had the perspective gained from choosing that way, I would have chosen differently. I tried to make that sentence hard to read because it feeds on itself. There is an inherent paradox. I need to make the mistakes I make so I can learn the lessons I need to learn. I can’t re-choose the past, it is gone. I can only look at today and the choices in front of me now and ask God to choose with me.
Wisdom is God’s loving action in the world. It is my experience or my knowledge informed by God’s love. In Job we read:
Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding. (Job 28:28)
The turn from my will to God’s will is to enter into Wisdom. Surrendering to a proper sense of awe and wonder at God’s glory is fear of the Lord. It demands a response. When that response falls short we are ensured of forgiveness.
So I can just ‘get over myself.’
Who am I to judge?
Here are some words to one of my favorite songs by Townes Van Zandt To Live is to Fly:
Days up and down they come
like rain on a conga drum.
Forget most, remember some,
but don’t turn none away.
Everything is not enough;
nothin’ is too much to bear.
Where you been is good and gone,
all you keep is the getting’ there.
There is some wisdom in that.
2 comments:
"Surrendering to a proper sense of awe and wonder at God’s glory is fear of the Lord."
Wow, I think you really hit it on the head there. I've always taken issue with the whole 'fear the lord' thing. As if we as mortals are supposed trudge along through life in fear if we are to truly appreciate god. Awe at God's glory. Man that's it! That also implies the proper sense of humility as well I think. To understand that we are but a grain of sand in the cosmic epic of the universe that is life. The more we can surrender to the unfolding of the universal epic the more Glory will be revealed to us, I believe. Sometimes I feel like THAT is why we are here; to surrender to the eventual point where we are overcome with infinite glory-love-being-conscioussness-bliss!
A couple of days ago a friend was talking about Pastor Wayne, he has the largest church in Hawaii. When P.Wayne was younger, he was in Katherine Kuhlman’s choir (a quirky, miraculous evangelist in the 70’s). One night they were waiting for Katherine to come out and P.Wayne had to use the bathroom. He said they were singing what seemed like forever and he couldn’t hold it anymore, he stepped down and made a run for it. As he headed to the restroom he passed the room Katherine was in and heard her crying. “I won’t go out there unless you go with me, please come, I won’t go without you.” Even as I write those words tears well up.
The past 2 years I have been planning and putting together my business Olympian Nutrition. Every prayer I prayed for the first year seemed to be answered miraculously and I felt God was in it. In the past year it seemed as though I was put in a deep well, actually, dropped in a deep well, sitting clueless and almost in the dark of what’s next. Because I have been working part time and playing hard I was feeling like a huge slacker. When I sat in front of my computer all my vision seemed to disappear. “Have I slacked so much Lord that you have withdrawn your blessing in this? Did I ever really have your blessing in this? Have I been so self-sufficient, so personally able that I was really doing this all on my own, without your wisdom and your presence? Have I wasted a year, is it too late?”
The past few days as I look back (thanks to your wisdom blog) I see my microwave timetable was and is useless and foolish. Instead of my heart resting and enjoying a sabbatical the past year, my heart has been stressing over missing the mark and I am almost embarrassed to say, afraid that I have disappointed God. Oh, that’s freeing to write!
I can’t stop the tears, so I’ll stop writing. Thank you so much for being honest and real.
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