This is what my book group is currently reading. We’ll discuss it together a week from to
morrow and I’m one chapter from being finished. Lots of thoughts have been prompted throughout, but this one has stuck with me…at least tonight:
The true test of wisdom is in how we handle personal failure. It is not that we never fail; it is in how we respond to failed relationships, or to the realization that we’ve taken a wrong turn, or to the times of fog that inevitably settle over our lives. In all this, a person on wisdom’s path seeks out the true nature of things – looking for wisdom between the gaps of events. In a life lived on wisdom’s path, every moment speaks, and nothing is ever truly wasted. (p201)
OK. One more:
Wisdom seeking is difficult because, as Martha Nussbaum has written, “Knowing can be violent, given the truths that are there to be known.” What this means for us is that in order to live on wisdom’s path, we will have to give up the illusion of safety. If we try to secure our safety, we will continually be doomed to dwell in fields of hesitation, stalled in neutral, forever wavering in the wind. (215)
So often (and, I think particularly as women) we are inclined to doubt our own internal wisdom, our sixth sense, our intuition, our gut. What seems “wise” externally often conflicts with what is going on internally but we don’t trust ourselves. Instead, we often choose to do things that are counter-intuitive, against our better (internal) judgment. We play it safe – but maybe not wisely!
Think how different these words sound: “the true test of wisdom is in how we handle personal failure.” That’s a far cry from a culture that affirms wisdom as not failing. And “…in order to live on wisdom’s path, we will have to give up the illusion of safety.” Again, far from the message that wise choices equal safe choices.
I’m encouraged, I must say. I have failed and I have made choices that are far from safe. I have trusted my inner voice, my better judgment, my intuition, what I’ve known to be true. And it has cost me. Wisdom does not equal ease. But every once in awhile, in some small and glorious moments of introspection, it does equal rest, peace, and even confidence.
Much of what Lillian Calles Barger is attempting to do in this book is to call us to an awareness of Jesus as Wisdom embodied, incarnate, lived. The Jesus I know was one who would have been seen and experienced, at least in his own culture, as unwise – knowing much personal failure and foolishly giving up all illusions of safety. It’s upside down and backwards. And it’s so full of grace, beauty, life, and yes, wisdom.
I’m not quite done with the book, but it’s been worth reading…even if only for those two quotes!
