Vicar's Sofa – Subversive Wisdom

Random confession time - I love a snarky cross stitch. There is something about sitting down for several hours and stitching something wildly inappropriate that just makes me smile. Something cathartic about reversing what is normally something so twee and wholesome and making it into something that pokes fun at the world and how we live in it.



From http://www.subversivecrossstitch.com/

And that is a little bit like some of the wisdom writings that I love the best, what I call Subversive Wisdom. In previous posts we have looked at finding wisdom in nature and in the every day things of the world. It is an approach that sees the world as ordered, than a result inevitably follows an action, that there are good ways to live that will bring good results.

That, to be sure, has an element of truth in it. We all know that results follow our actions, that to a certain extent we live the life we build and we reap what we sow. But life is also a tricky old *insert swear word here!* at times! We certainly don't always get what we deserve. Children get ill, relationships get derailed, wars break out and life is simply horribly unfair.

That is what Subversive Wisdom is all about. It is about saying 'hang on a minute with your Proverbs and your advice this totally *bleeeeep* thing is happening to me. What do you make of that?' There are two books in the Bible that particularly take this approach, the book of Job and the book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes is like a long catalogue of the rubbishness of life. 'Everything is meaningless' says the author. Everything ends and all that we work for is handed on to those who come after us whether they have earned it or not. The days are long and life is hard and at time inexplicable. He laments and argues and grumbles and snarks his way through twelve chapters.

Job, on the other hand, is a story of a man who has everything. For a while. Then catastrophe strikes and he loses everything, home, family, livelihood and health. It is the stuff of nightmares. Job is visited by a number of friends with appallingly bad advice but advice that sounds oddly reminiscent of some of the good life wisdom writings. Job, however, is having none of it and simply says 'No, this is rubbish and I've done nothing to deserve it. It is simply unfair and I'll hear nothing else.'

I like this stubborn resistance to glib reassurance and platitudes in Job and Ecclesiastes. I like the complete rejection of easy answers that avoids the reality that life can be bone crushingly hard. And do the authors get anywhere with this approach? Well of sorts. Job is commended by God for continuing to protest his innocence. Ecclesiastes swings between darkness and light, seeing the joy in life as well as the sorrow.

But ultimately they are both books that end with a great big question mark, just like the difficult chapters of our own lives. No reason appears. No safe answer that we can comfortably accept appears. We just struggle on and pass through and keep going hoping against hope that new life that is waiting for us on the other side.

And so I love this side of the wisdom literature, this gritty, dark side. It allows us to get real about the realities of life and death. It challenges any attempt to control or make safe the tempestuous journey of life. For every piece of advice about living life well perhaps we also ought to take a dose of this to heart.

Vicar's Sofa – Wisdom in YOUR Day

I have a dream one day. A happy little vision of myself as I near the end of my days which, knowing me, is probably dramatically unlikely but makes me smile nonetheless. In my mind I can see myself as a lady of good years, long hair plaited and grey, sitting with hands folded as I rock gently back and forth in an old wooden rocking chair. I'll be peaceful, happy, smiling and....wise. Able to nod sagely in conversation because of all I have picked up over the years. Ahhh...I wish!

 

Woman in A Rocking Chair - Renoir

 

This little image is something of a word picture for another approach to wisdom that you can pick up in the pages of the Bible which has also been the approach of the many, many civilizations around the world where people have turned their hand to wisdom writing. Observation, living, the 'University of Life' as it were - this approach to gaining of wisdom is all about the every day.

I love the book of Proverbs in the Bible because much of it appears to have been drawn from folk traditions, the real people who lived all those years ago in those sun scorched lands. The sayings are about real things. About how you approach work, how you raise your kids, it is a philosophy for life that has a bearing on what your days are like right now.

Proverbs is like one big great collection of wisdom gathered from a nation. It's all the things your Grandma told you that you really wish you had written down. These are a few of my favourites:

'The wise heart is called perspective, and pleasant speech increases persuasiveness' Prov 16:21

'A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity' Proverbs17:17

'Desire without knowledge is not good, and one who moves hurriedly misses the way' Prov 19:2

All this is not to say that you can simply pick up ancient ideas about life and apply then directly to modern life, there are some rather questionable approaches to disciplining children in the book of Proverbs, but there is much that stands the test of time. And the principle remains that wisdom involves learning from one another in our communities as well as listening to the past, drawing down into the deep well of our heritage and history to encourage and inspire our lives today.

The wisdom traditions of the world have quite happily borrowed from each other in this enterprise, swapping ideas as they swapped spices along the trade routes. The wisdom literature of the Bible carries influences and sometimes direct borrowing from Ancient Egypt, Babylon and Ancient Greece to name a few. They took the insights of others and adapted them, seeing them through their own cultural and religious lens, but valuing the insights of others.

What a great example to us today when we have the huge privilege of being part of a world where we have such ready access to other cultures and religions and all the wisdom they contain. Seeking Wisdom is a generous task and wisdom can be the enterprise of anyone and everyone. In fact the view from where someone else is standing may be just the thing we need to enrich our own.

So, there is a huge amount to commend in this approach to gaining wisdom. Observing, wondering, exploring the world and sharing this generously and open heartedly. Sounds great, doesn't it?

To catch up with previous posts in the series on 'What is Wisdom?' and 'Wisdom and the Natural world', get clicking! :)

Vicar's Sofa – Finding Wisdom in the Natural World

One of the defining moments of my life came from an interaction with nature. I was working in South Africa at the time on the whale watching boats researching the marine life of the area. The boat was quiet that afternoon so I managed to get a spot with a friend for a bit of a jolly. We headed out until the shore looked like a thin line and the houses like tiny dots. The sea was perfectly still, like a shimmering silver blanket.

As we cut out our engine something in the air changed, that is the only way I can describe it, and we all fell into a quiet hush on the boat. I looked at the skipper and he mouthed 'it's going to breach'. I felt every muscle in my body tense up. Then, out of that perfectly still sea emerged a Humpback Whale. 16 metres long, sleek grey body mottled with white, sailing through the air swiftly followed by its 3 metre long baby. It takes a lot to shut me up but that moment left me awestruck, silent, for the rest of the afternoon.

The magnificent Humpback whale from animals.nationalgeographic.com

That experience taught me that you can learn a lot from nature. It can bring up in you all sorts of feelings that are hard even to put into words. Studying nature at university, and being privileged to have that amazing moment with one of the world's most spectacular animals, has given me a sense of the beautiful order, the underlying peace and wonder, that is in the world around us.

When I started exploring wisdom literature I was delighted, then to find that many, many people before me have seen the same thing. That looking to nature as a way of understanding the world, of seeking wisdom, is as old as humanity.



Another spectacular African view -  Sunset at a lake in Zambia

In the Old Testament nature is closely associated with the wisdom tradition. Some of my favourite passages of the entire Bible relate to watching the natural world and drawing wisdom from it. This is a personal favourite written at least two and a half thousand years ago:

'Four things on earth are small yet they are extremely wise:

Ants are creatures of little strength yet they store up food in the summer.
Rock badgers are creatures of little power yet they make their home in the crags.
Locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks.
A lizard can be caught in the hand, yet it is found in kings' palaces.' 

 Proverbs 30:24-28

That feeling of connecting to something bigger than ourselves and drawing something from nature to help guide us or inspire us in our life is probably something we can all recognize. It is why we travel, or climb mountains, set up bird tables or go for walks in woodlands.

 

As well as this observation of nature Wisdom is also associated with the formation of the world in the Old Testament. You will, of course, have your own ideas about how we got here on this strange spinning rock in the middle of space.

One way of thinking about the Old Testament wisdom literature approach could be this - imagine wisdom to be a principle like gravity, something that is set into the ordering of the world. It is there from the beginning and underpins all things just as evolution underpins the emergence of new species and life on our planet. Proverbs puts it like this:

'The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed before eternity, from the beginning before the world began.'  Proverbs 8:22-3

The ancient Greeks had a similar idea in philosophy the logos which was the word used for the principle of order and knowledge in the world. Wisdom can be understood as something like that then, an order, a principle, a real and tangible thing that underpins everything in the world.

I love these possibilities raised in the wisdom tradition. I love how they chime with my experience of awe and wonder, how they make sense of our human connectedness and draw to the natural world, when we let ourselves feel it. I particularly love that growing in wisdom might be as easy as flopping down on the grass in my back garden and watching the birds overhead. That wonderful things can absolutely be found in the ordinary.

What do you think, is wisdom to be found in the natural world?

 

This is the second post in the Wisdom Series, to see the first post click here.

Vicar's Sofa - What is Wisdom?

In a previous post I suggested that life might be a whole lot easier if we were given a manual on arrival at this strange and wonderful planet that we live on. That a route map for life would solve a whole load of ills amongst the endless array of options that modern life offers us. Perhaps, even better, would be an inbuilt SatNav, a guide to tell you as you go that you are on the right path or need to make a U-turn. I know I could use one!

Unsurprisingly questions of how to live life well and find the right path in life have perplexed human beings for generations. Writing about life and all its complexities, or Wisdom Literature, is present in a bewildering brilliant array of civilizations throughout history. It is certainly in abundance today. In her book Thrive the founder of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington writes 'Wherever we look around the world we see smart leaders – in politics, in business, in media – making terrible decisions. What they're lacking is not IQ but wisdom.'

 

I don't know about you but I want wise politicians, wise writers, wise judges and wise religious leaders in a world that so often seems to be spinning out of control. And I want to be wise myself, making good decisions about my day to day life, seeing to the heart of things, going the right way in the limited years I have, reaching old age with a knowing smile and a brilliant head of long grey hair!

I have a little book called A Special Gift of Wisdom which is full of quotes about living a wise life. The one thing it struggles to do, however, is to define what wisdom actually is. It's like wisdom is always one step ahead, something you know when you see it but that is really hard to put your finger on.. During my theological studies I wrote an essay on 'What is wisdom?' and I can tell you that even the scholars can't agree! Wisdom definitely has that je ne sais quoi!

Wisdom is something about discernment, something about experience, something about understanding the world, something about the way you see things, something about living life well. In my studies I have spent a chunk of time looking at Jewish and Christian wisdom literature and I am completely nuts for it. I jibber-jabber on about it so much to my poor, long suffering husband that I thought it really was high time I wrote about it.

 

So in the next few weeks I'll be posted a five part series on Wisdom. Think of it as a bit of a magical mystery tour after this illusive characteristic, a dip into the pool of the ancients and how they saw the world from their perspective. We have so much to learn from those who went before us. I'll look at wisdom in nature, wisdom and the every day, subversive wisdom and wisdom in the Christian story.

Eeek I can't wait to get started! :)