Wisdom

Probably the highest compliment one can give is to say that someone is
wise. Both our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures and that from the letter to the Ephesians proclaim the value of wisdom. In the lesson from First Kings we are told of Solomon’s gift of wisdom. In Ephesians we are advised to "Be careful ...how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time..." In the early church wisdom became personified as "Holy Wisdom." One of the largest churches in Christendom is that in Constantinople (now Istanbul) dedicated to "Hagia Sophia" or "Holy Wisdom,"

In many religious traditions, wisdom is viewed as the highest virtue. The wise person is one who knows what is right and who lives according to that knowledge. Wisdom is never just "head knowledge." It is "heart knowledge" too. It is to know and to do. It is to be of one piece: body, mind and spirit.

Wisdom, of course, is related, of course not automatically, to age. In many cultures the elders were those who were the bearers of wisdom. One of the best books on the subject I know, written by a wise rabbi, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, is called From Age-ing to Sage-ing. In it Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi points out that the aim for each of us as we age is not just to add years, but to attain wisdom which we can pass on to others. Life is not complete, he claims, until we have put the truths by which we live together and passed them on. He observed, humorously, that it is like writing on a computer. You haven't really written it until you have hit the "save" button. This, he says, gives a whole new meaning to the question, "Brother, or sister, are you saved?"

We all have the capacity for wisdom, whether we have graduate degrees or little formal education, whether we have high I.Qs. or average intelligence. Some of the wisest people I came to know in my early ministry in rural New Jersey had never completed high school! Wisdom is often passed down, not in doctoral dissertations or learned books, but in stories and legends. Three qualities of wisdom that are important to me are very well illustrated by children's stories from books I have read to my children and grandchildren, books by that wonderful story teller, Dr. Seuss.

The first truth about wisdom is that it is wise to know that I am a limited being, limited in knowledge and power. Dr. Seuss illustrates this truth in a story called Yertle the Turtle. Yertle was no ordinary turtle. He was "king of the pond, master of all he surveyed." One day Yertle looked out from a rock in his little pond and decided that he could be master of more things if he could get up a little higher. And so he ordered another turtle to get up on the rock and Yertle climbed on his back. This way he became master of more of the pond and a little of the meadow beyond. Yertle became a little mad with power at this discovery, and so he ordered more turtles to pile themselves on the rock until the king turtle was at the top of 20 or more of his subjects. He now became master of trees and cows and hills beyond. He ordered more turtles to pile themselves up, but finally the whole pile became unstable, and Yertle went falling down deep into the pond's mud. His subjects became so disenchanted with their king that they declared the pond a democracy and that was the end of Yertle's reign. The wisdom of the story, of course, is that we are all limited beings and that, above all, we do not become great by exercising power or influence over others.

The second truth about wisdom is that it is wise to know that, though we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must begin with a proper love for ourselves. Dr. Seuss illustrates this truth with the story Thidwick the Big Hearted Moose. Now Thidwick was a very kind moose, and so one day when a spider came by and asked if he might build a web in Thidwick's fine set of antlers, Thidwick said yes, and then also said yes to a little squirrel who asked if he might make a home in the antlers. But then came a rabbit, a woodchuck, other creatures, and at last a large brown bear, all happy to take advantage of Thidwick's hospitality. Thidwick was a strong moose and somehow managed to get along, until one day in the fall when the hunting season began. A hunter sighted the strange scene of a large moose with a veritable managery in his antlers. What a prize to be taken back to the club! But as the hunter took aim and adjusted his sights Thidwick stood helpless, unable to run with all the weight on his head, but then he remembered that once a year a moose sheds his antlers. Giving a shake of his head, the antlers and his guests fell off, and Thidwick was free to plunge into a thicket and be safe. Meanwhile the antlers and all the guests ended up in the trophy room at the Harvard Club. Dr. Seuss teaches us that while we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves, we must begin with a proper love of one's own self. A wise Jewish writer once put it this way, "If I am not for others, what is life for? If I am not for myself, who shall be for me, and if not now, when?"

The third truth about wisdom is that it is wise to know that we can all fail and need to be forgiven. Dr. Seuss illustrates this in one of my favorite of his stories, Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Bartholomew is a pageboy to King Derwin of Didd. He illustrates that even children can be wise and teach us older people lessons. One day King Derwin became bored with the sameness of things, even the weather. Year after year the same things come out of the sky: rain, hail, sleet and snow. Bartholomew questions if even King Derwin can do anything about it, but the King decides to summon up his sorcerers from their cave beneath the castle and present them with the problem. They tell him that they can raise up something new called "oobleck," but they have never done it before and can't predict the results. King Derwin say that they should go ahead with the experiment anyway. They return to their cave and put all sorts of things into a boiling cauldron, and sure enough, the next morning when Bartholomew looks up into the sky he sees green specks of oobleck, which is like green glue. The king is delighted that his experiment is working, but as the oobleck falls heavier, disaster strikes. Everything in the kingdom is gummed up by oobleck. Creatures are stuck together, and the castle, like every other home in the kingdom, is covered with the greenish slime. The king himself is stuck to his throne. The king calls out to Bartholomew to summon the sorcerers again and have them utter more magic words to get them out of this mess, but Bartholomew, at the end of his patience with his king, tells him that the sorcerers can't get to the palace and that no magic words are going to help until the King learns to say the magic words, "I'm sorry!" Surprisingly the king "wises up" and sobs out the words "O Bartholomew, I am sorry!" As if by magic the oobleck all over the kingdom begins to soften and drain away and everyone is saved. The "magic words" are "I'm sorry. Please forgive." It is wise to know that I am capable of making mistakes, of failing, and in need of forgiveness. This is true of page boys and kings, of politicians and old retired people, of all of us.

To be wise, in part then, is to know that you are a limited being, limited in knowledge and power. To be wise is to love your neighbor and to properly love yourself. To be wise is to know that you can fail and be forgiven. Most of all, to be wise is to be in relationship with the one in whom we "live and move and have our being." This is the meaning of those strange words in our gospel about eating Christ's body and drinking his blood. It is, in this sacramental way, to be in communion with God, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, the God we know supremely through Jesus Christ our Lord.