PONDERING WISDOM . . .                        The Revd Deacon Polly M. Bowen

Suddenly it’s September, and school starts again – public schools, private schools, big schools, small schools, and school right here at St. Matthias for people from pre-school to adult.  It’s an exciting time; children  (and adults) approach education with varied emotions – anticipation, trepidation, enthusiasm, anxiety, satisfaction.

            I always liked school.  As a little girl at Penn State University, I started school when I was 18 months old.  Placed in the campus nursery school with other sons and daughters of professors, I took to learning like a duck to water, and never looked back.  My mother was a former schoolteacher, and with her help I was reading before I entered kindergarten.  Everybody said I was smart, and that I would probably follow in the footsteps of my professor father.

            So much for predictions.  I didn’t follow in his footsteps, especially when marriage and children intervened shortly after high school and it was fifteen years before I returned to school.  But since that time, my GPAs at the various schools I have attended seemed to give credence to the prediction that I would be “smart.”

            But I knew better.  As I grew older, I found that “smart” isn’t so great – almost anybody can be smart.  (My son once informed me that “you old ladies always mess up the grade curve.”)  It just takes a little perseverance, a boldness of reflection, a willingness to leap the margins of conventional thought, a lot of curiosity, and the development of whatever gifts you’ve been given in life.  If it was easy for me to get A’s, it was because I had a natural aptitude for descriptive expression, especially in writing. Further, I was always in drama club, and I learned quickly how to put some spice into the most boring oral reports. Professors were always impressed with the way I put words together, and they often missed (or at least overlooked) the gaps in my knowledge.

            So “smart” isn’t where it’s at.  I would much prefer to be known as “wise.”  I’ve known a few really wise people in my life.  My mother was incredibly wise, although I didn’t always recognize it.  My step-dad, with only an 8th grade education, was one of the wisest men I ever knew.  My daughter’s quiet wisdom in the raising of her children and grandchild has always impressed me deeply.  When the Holy Spirit blew through my life and drove me back to the church, I had an exceptionally wise spiritual director, a laywoman named Annette who guided my spiritual growth for several years.

            Wisdom is a gift from God.  King Solomon certainly thought so, for that was the gift he requested.  But when the Giver gives a gift, it requires some cooperation from the Giftee.  Solomon‘s wisdom, for the most part, was squandered in superficial cleverness, used to build majestic palaces so he could live in oriental splendor like the neighboring kings.

            I’m not looking for oriental splendor.  The kind of wisdom I’m seeking is the kind where I always have just the right thing to say when someone comes for help, where I don’t get drawn into silly discussions or exasperated by inane argument, where I have the ability to be calm and unruffled in any circumstance.  This kind of wisdom takes a lifetime to acquire, and comes along only in the company of prayer, study and lots of humility  (and letting go of “me-centeredness.”)  What’s more, it seems to be a gift that the truly wise aren’t even aware of possessing.  They never tell you they’re wise – you have to discover that for yourself.

            I ponder what it is that I have seen in the wise people I’ve known.  It has something to do with the way they live their lives – the way prayer seems to permeate everything they do, the busy times along with the quiet times.  It’s the way their work is quietly dedicated to helping others, the way they accept interruptions as normal, the way they find joy in all they do.  The special aura of wise people is their connectedness to others, and their connectedness to God.

            Now that’s something to strive for.  The only trouble is that it isn’t something you can force; you just have to take things day by day.  You can work on that “connectedness” – you can pray – you can study – but it really isn’t a matter of taking on or giving up.  Those things will happen, but they aren’t the goal.

            The real goal is God.  It’s a gift to be able to focus on God alone.  We slide so easily into thinking of all the benefits of a God-centered life, thanking him but also wishing, hoping, praying for them to continue.  The catechism in our prayer book tells us of the many kinds of prayer – thanksgiving, adoration, intercession, and so on, but even the catechism forgets to tell us about the deep longing for God that both nourishes us and makes us aware of our great need.  Augustine said it this way: “Our hearts are restless ‘till they rest in Thee.”  And the wise person knows that she will never rest completely in God this side of eternity.

            That’s because God doesn’t dance to our tune – the moment we feel his Presence and grasp for it, he slips away like quicksilver.  God dances into my awareness when I least expect it, and just as quickly dances off.  Time and again I have felt that fleeting Presence, and always I long for more.  But all the education, all the prayer and meditation, and all the longing will not bring that “felt presence” around according to my will.  It is always God’s will, and God’s initiative – and it is enough, because God knows my needs before I ask.

            Thomas Aquinas, the brilliant 13th century Dominican and Doctor of the Church, whose works still guide and influence catholic Christianity, is said to have put aside his writing near the end of his life.  He had experienced the Presence of God frequently during his lifetime, but after a particularly moving encounter with the Holy, he declared that everything he had ever written was of so little value (as straw, he said) that he was content just to rest in that Presence.

            I am not yet ready to give up on writing – perhaps because for me it is often a form of prayer.  (Or perhaps because I have not and never will arrive at the degree of wisdom that blessed Thomas achieved.)  But I have long since given up on the idea that being “smart” – or for that matter, even being wise – is a particularly worthwhile goal.  The only goal that matters is to prepare myself, to listen to his voice, to be receptive to his love, and to live and work so that others may also hear the Word and abide in that great Love.

      When I have learned to do that, I will have learned something of great value.