Wisdom

King David dies and his son from Bathsheba, Solomon, becomes king. Solomon then does a lot of political maneuvering in the form of alliances and arranged marriages, as any king would do.

Solomon has a dream and God says, “Ask what I should give you.” And Solomon asks the ability to be able to discern between good and evil. He asks for wisdom.

I’ve been chasing wisdom for a while now. It’s a hard thing to pin down. It’s related to intelligence, education, and learning… but it’s none of those things. It is a blend of smarts, experience, and judgment. Wisdom has a sort of paradox about it. It is something that comes upon us or we have moments of wisdom. It’s not something we can own.

I studied the wisdom of the 4 natural elements in my doctoral week. Authors John O’Donohue and Diana Butler Bass wrote books that both mentioned how nature has an inherent wisdom shown by the 4 elements.

The wisdom of air gives us space to move and breathe. Without space, we’d all be crunched together. The universe was once this way right after the big bang. It was liquid hot plasma before it became transparent. Air gives us the ability to be individuals. It gives us space to move. Yet air connects us. We all breathe the same air.

Last week, dust storms in Houston caused some trouble because the wind blew sand from Africa.[1] Air separates and connects us. It has no history, it blows where it will. No one can see it, it holds the realm of the invisible. Yet it is not empty.

A long time ago, spirits, ghosts, and fairies were one’s hidden neighbors. Yet our materialism has evicted them and our spirituality has slid away. Materialism is the quest for more, whether it’s money, power, possession, or control of people. Solomon doesn’t ask for more material things. He asks for wisdom.

The element of water has wisdom. It has great generosity and humility. It takes the shape of whatever it is placed in. It always seems to know the low points and can find its way to the sea. Water can be splashed around, yet after any disturbance, it comes back together seamlessly.

Water enjoys freedom but it also can rage and flood and drown. We are made of mostly water and without water we die and so do our crops and farm animals. My father in-law once said that home ownership is pretty much a fight against water that we’ll eventually lose.

The element of fire has wisdom. It warms us and lights our nights. The universe was born in fire. Yet our species seems to be the only one to use this element. No matter how cold it gets, we have yet to come across cows or horses outside lighting fires. The image of a fire is a cozy one and it reminds us of home, even if the house of our youth never had a fireplace.

There is a democracy in fire. It knows what it needs and will go after it. It needs air and fuel. Yet fire is amoral, it shows no recognition or awareness of what it burns. It burns anything and anyone. Like the fires in the West right now. Not enough balance, not enough water, and fire just doing what fire does. It’s a tragedy.

There is wisdom in earth. Without earth, there would be no landscape and without the landscape nothing would have a home. There would literally be no place to put us. Our lives are deeply affected by the landscape whether we’re aware of it or not. Earth has a deep memory, it keeps a record of all who pass. It didn’t just appear, it took untold time to arrive. It watched us come and will watch us go. Just as it did the dinosaurs. And deep in its depths, it kept some mementos that we unearthed and put in museums and made a whole bunch of Jurassic Park movies about.

The four elements together hold a great wisdom. Just think of how they interact. We come from dust, earth, we have breath, we are made of water, and we are animated by the divine spark, the fire that drives us.

Yet we are not often wise. We have used fire to burn and create weapons to kill. We have taken from the memory of the stone the oil and gas that lights up our nights and fuels our cars. In burning these, we are warming our earth and putting our future generations and countless species at risk. We poisoned our air in doing so. We have polluted our water sources through fracking and careless farming practices.

We are forgetting the wisdom of our ancestors. We are no longer asking God for wisdom to be able to discern between good and evil. We seem no longer to ask after the common good. Instead, we quest after likes and followers. We cave to our materialism. We pursue wealth and longevity. We fill the air with our opinions and complaints. We play the victim. We deny that we are indeed poisoning and abusing the earth and consuming too much because we would have to change. We act like we don’t share the same planet with people whom we don’t like or who follow a different religion, politician or sports team. We are pursuing wealth, a long life, revenge…

We get it in our head that people are all good or all bad. And that’s how we treat them. The bad people must by punished. Ignored. Shunned. They must be put in prison and forgotten about. And whatever happens while they’re in there… well they deserve it.

We are suffering from a profound lack of wisdom. We are swimming in knowledge. We have the 24-hour news cycle bombarding us with information. We have a magic black mirror in our pockets where we can look up anything we want; from the date of the Hindenburg disaster to where the closest tacos are. Yet we are also more connected and frazzled than ever.

A prime ingredient for wisdom is time. Time in reflection. Time spent doing nothing. Ever notice how ideas come to you when you’re doing something else, maybe something mindless (not “something else” like looking at your phone)? Like for me, I get sermons while I run. Or ideas right when I get in the shower. Or when I’m mowing the lawn. Have you had this experience?

Wisdom comes when we’re at rest. Sort of like how you can practice and practice a song, but you just can’t get it. You take a nap and then suddenly, you can play that part. Or you can’t remember someone’s name until 5 minutes later. Or how after a conversation the perfect words come to you.

Wisdom is not immediate. It comes after failure. It comes with a lot of learning and education and connecting disparate concepts and history. Wisdom is not on demand. It is a slow rhythm of life. It’s inherent in creation. The Bible amplifies this wisdom.

Solomon is especially wise. He is credited with writing the book of Ecclesiastes, my favorite book of the Bible after the Gospels. Solomon writes, “Vanity of vanity! All is vanity.” Your job title is vanity. Your ambition is vanity. Your quest for originality is vanity for there is nothing new under the sun (1:9b). Self-indulgence, education, work, and striving for a long-life, all this is vanity and amounts to nothing. It’s all chasing after the wind.

Yet for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under the sun. So enjoy good food and drink, take pleasure in the process, don’t be tied to the outcomes. And love the ones you’re with, for two are better than one. Practice reverence, humility, and contentment. And be open to wisdom, for wisdom is better than might, better than gold, better than everything.

Seek wisdom. Unplug. Let wisdom find you on the breeze. Let it ignite the fire in your bones. Uncover it as you are close to the soil, for earth has a long memory. Let it flow through you and rain down on you like water. For wisdom is every where if we stop and take time to observe and reflect.

Works Cited

 https://abc13.com/weather/the-dust-is-back-more-haze-from-african-dust-now-overhead/2245790/

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