The Way of Wisdom

Margaret Silf

• Publisher: Lion Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745957524
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Reference

This fascinating book brings together wisdom from around the world and through the ages. Sources include the Bible, new science and new cosmology, native spirituality, folk stories, natural history, poetry and commentary on life situations by wise people (e.g. Desmond Tutu and Kahlil Gibran).

Themes include:

- Original wisdom (the wisdom that makes possible the universe we know)
- Natural wisdom (the wisdom in the created world)
- Native wisdom (the wisdom expressed in all human traditions from the earliest stages of our human journey)
- Life wisdom (practical wisdom we gather and pass on)
- Desert wisdom (wisdom we gather in the dark times)
- Guiding wisdom (the wisdom that gives us direction)
- Unfolding wisdom (the wisdom unfolding around us that reveals that we don't have all the answers).

The Way of Wisdom will appeal to all those searching for a deeper meaning and sense of connectedness in their lives.

Life Wisdom

When I was a little girl, I sometimes heard the comment that a particular person in my family or circle of acquaintances had been educated in ‘the university of life’. In my early years I often wondered about this remarkable establishment that engendered such wisdom in its graduates. Perhaps I even wondered whether I would ever gain admission to such a centre of learning. I needn’t have worried. We are all enrolled, whether we like it or not. But whether we actually learn anything there is up to us, of course.

When I reflect on what wisdom means, and where it comes from, I am coming to the conclusion that wisdom is not a product of learning, but the fruit of experience. Experience alone, however, is not sufficient to produce the fruit. The experience needs to be reflected upon if it is to ripen into wisdom. Life supplies us all with a constant supply of experience. The challenge is to reflect on that experience and allow it to distil into wisdom. In this section we will explore some of the forms this life-experience may take and what fruits it may yield.

As we embark on this exploration, we might begin by joining the Irish poet-philosopher Patrick Kavanagh, perched perhaps in his favourite spot on the banks of the Liffey, as he muses:

And I have a feeling

That through the hole in reason’s ceiling
We can fly to knowledge
Without ever going to college.

Patrick Kavanagh¹

The gift of experience

When you awoke this morning, you had absolutely no idea of what the new day would bring. You may have had your schedule for the day, your definite agenda, your ‘to-do list’, but quite probably when evening falls, you will remember not so much the things you meant to do, but the surprises that came in sideways, that delighted or derailed you. While the routine chores of living run on relentlessly along our carefully prepared and well-oiled tracks, the moments that interrupt this smooth line of operations are what Kavanagh calls ‘the holes in reason’s ceiling’. We might well wish we could avoid them. They make life unpredictable and even hazardous, because we can’t prepare our response to them. They demand our spontaneity, and that can make us feel very vulnerable. Emily Dickinson compares this process of fielding life’s surprises to the action of walking across a rickety bridge.

I stepped from plank to plank

So slow and cautiously;
The stars about my head I felt,

About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next

Would be my final inch –
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience.

Emily Dickinson²

Yet these unplanned intrusions can also be the catalysts that make us grow, and so the first requirement is to be open to them. Sometimes this opening is both risky and costly. Sometimes we fail to be open because we simply don’t believe that there is more to ourselves, and each other, and life, than what we can see. What matters is to be aware of the mystery that life conceals, and to let our choices reflect what really leads to fuller and more meaningful living:

I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don’t even know it.

‘You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the colour of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart – now, that matters. The whole problem with people is…’

‘They don’t know what matters and what doesn’t,’ I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.

‘I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it… the hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.’

Sue Monk Kidd³

Bruce Lee, too, finds the spiritual in the everyday and urges us to be open to it, and to trust our experience:

Let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.

Bruce Lee⁴

Such awareness of the hidden mystery of things is the gift of insight – the harvest that grows when both eyes and heart are open:

Mere sight is what we see; insight is how we see it. Mere sight can only behold; it takes insight to comprehend. Both the eyes and the heart must be open.

Robert Kirschner⁵

So how do we reflect on our experience in such a way as to uncover its wisdom? Sometimes I think of ‘prayer’ as a little bit like beach-combing. We walk the shoreline of life day by day, and sometimes the experience will catch our attention and demand to be noticed, like some beautiful shell that startles us with a reflection of how beautiful our own souls can be, or a piece of wreckage that refuses to let us forget how broken we are. The daily journey of life brings its own nuggets of wisdom. All we need are eyes to notice and a heart to gather the harvest that today’s incoming tide has deposited in our memory. Mary Wainwright has some guidance to offer:

Sing your experience as a verse, part of the song sung by the soul of the world.

Examine every day of your life to find its meaning, however small that may seem.

Listen to the earth as she breathes, to the universal pulse that runs through all our lives.

Remember with humility our connection to each other and to the divine.

Surrender to the guiding hand, which we may not see, but that touches us all.

Have courage to show your light through the mists of earthly confusion.

Dance to the rhythms you thought you had forgotten. Bring truth to each day.

Find joy in your being.

Be still, be silent, be aware, be peace

And you will know the reason for your existence.

Mary Wainwright⁶

When our small daughter was learning to use crayons and pencils, she came to me one day with a sheet of what can only be called ‘scribble’. I admired it with a mother’s eyes, told her how fine it was, and then (silly me!) asked her what it meant. She gave me one of those disdainful looks that only a toddler can produce, and responded: ‘I don’t know what it means. I only “wrot” it!’

I often think back to that sentence, and wonder whether I should include it in the preface of any book I write myself! However, I had to smile when I discovered that far greater beings than I have the same problem in knowing what they mean, and prefer simply to live their meanings, and let significance evolve in the living.

There is a story of a Russian ballerina who gave a superbly moving performance at the Kirov Ballet, leaving the audience enraptured at what they knew to be a uniquely inspired occasion. Afterwards, she was asked, ‘And what did it mean?’

‘What did it mean?’, she responded, ‘What did it mean? If I could say what it meant, I would not have danced it.’

Keith Ward⁷

Mitch Albom even thinks heaven exists to enable us to make sense of ourselves:

That’s what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays.

Mitch Albom⁸

The greatness in the least of us

Stephen Hawking, one who quite literally reaches for the stars, reminds us that:

We are very small,
but we are profoundly capable
of very big things.

Where does this greatness come from? For the medieval German mystic, Meister Eckhart, the greatness of which each of us is capable, is the fruit of a seed of divinity itself within us:

The seed of God exists in us. Given a hard worker and a good...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Original Wisdom
• Natural Wisdom
• Indigenous Wisdom
• Desert Wisdom
• Guiding Wisdom
• Life Wisdom
• Unfolding Wisdom
• References
• Text Acknowledgments