I am very grateful to be here. I'm grateful to have been invited, and I thank you already for your hospitality. I feel really very warmly welcomed. Before I begin, there are two of my sisters that I would ask you especially to pray for. One of our sisters is entering the novitiate tonight, Barb, in about 45 minutes, so if you would remember her. And one of our other sisters, who was in her middle 70s, very active, our librarian, and so happened even was the prayer leader this week, died very suddenly yesterday morning. She got up and was dressing and just dropped dead about 5.30 yesterday morning. We've all decided that's the way to go, but it's hard on the rest of us when that happens. What I'd like to do tonight is braid three things together.

[01:05]

I'd really like to do just a little bit on what wisdom is. and then draw some general things about the relationship between wisdom and the monastic life, how the monastic life is a wisdom-based life, and then look at the figure of the wisdom woman. Now, we'll continue to do all of these things for the next couple of days, but I'd just like to lay some groundwork to begin with. And if I'm not going a direction you want me to go, or if you can't hear me, or if you want me to stop, any of those things I am open to. I didn't spend 30 years teaching for nothing. What I would like to do as a beginning, is to take a few minutes to think of someone you know whom you consider to be wise.

[02:11]

Think of some wise person that you know. Just kind of get a picture of who that is. Think about what it is about that person that makes you think he or she is wise? What qualities? What actions? Why do you think this person is wise? And think about how that person got to be wise. Somebody who's wise, what makes you think that person is wise, and how that person got that way.

[03:56]

Is there anything you want to say about the qualities? What is it in this person you're thinking of that makes you think he or she is wise? Qualities or actions? Yes, I put down my Aunt Catherine, who is 90 this year, and she's very dear to me. And I said she's wise, that is, she has shown herself to me to be loving, accepting, tolerant, productive, fearless, loves life. She was a farm girl who went to the city and was not afraid to live and learn. She sounds wonderful. She's a great lady. I thought of a person who had very clear insight in just about everything I ever knew he said or did. He had a lot of good insight. A real confidence in himself in everything he said or did.

[05:24]

And when he spoke, he spoke very, very briefly in just a few words and it all seemed to come together. I think of a man who's a monk, and I've known him for about 42 years. And he's in his late 80s now, and he's getting a little frail, but he still has the wisdom that comes, I feel, from the experience of living this life. He's a man of, I would say, of passion that has become tempered, because I can remember seeing in the earlier years of the anger, and that he has channeled that, and been a guide, a listener. During the most difficult periods, you know, how I think he came to wisdom, I used to see him kneeling in the dark for an hour or more after the night of the Gola Vasa sacrament, just being there when he was disappeared.

[06:35]

and acquiring that ability to listen and to share. And he did it definitely the other day. It's just a wonderful day. We're still in the process of enjoying it. I think it's a wonderful day. I think the new word now is somebody who has it together. That's right. I think of a man that we all know, John Paul II. I admire him intensely. In a lot of ways, he not only shows great wisdom, compassion, Well, and, um, how many of you have been studying in the Vixen? Well, that attracts me.

[07:36]

I've read some of his articles, but, uh, and I think we're very fortunate with having him as our Holy Father. I think of, because if I go on and [...] which has been to temper and test the depth and the consistency of talent of a person to make it a goal in your life.

[08:51]

Yeah. In your life. King's Island. I'm quoting a gentleman who's been in a couple of different disciplines, but with a great respect, really, a great sense of respect in his presence, and so competent, and also able to be surprised, the poor and the beast, that sense of wonder is still there, and shows again a view that's a little strong, that kind of eagerness, has an anxiety out that he doesn't have, and he'll continue to learn what to do. You know, it's one of the big challenges in life.

[09:53]

And now he's put back by his difficulty, which he gained when he was out there and occupied. Currently, when it's Japanese, it's a concentration camp. If you wanted a young child, it would need some attention. I had a lot of different experiences with this. And I've had some experiences with it myself. I've been insightful and careful about not coming through without being loose and things. So people who, well first let me tell you, my wise person is our sister Imogene, some of you may know of her, sister Imogene Baker, who was the dean of our college for a long time and then started the Center for Benedictine Studies at our place.

[10:55]

But it's some of these same qualities that I think make her wise. that openness to life, the willingness to go with life, whichever direction it takes, the reflection and so on, the things that you're saying and that we're trying to put together here in terms of a definition of wisdom. Someone who loves life, who has the passion for life, who has the capability of enduring and persevering throughout. Somebody who has insight. Somebody who knows that wisdom is a gift and is willing to pray and be patient. Somebody who has it together. Somebody who really can take what life offers and keep living with it. And how did these folks get this way? Through long-suffering.

[11:57]

Through long-suffering, yeah, through living. You've all said something about experience. Compassion was something else you said, which is another quality. Experience really is the basis of wisdom. In biblical wisdom literature, It's different from all the other kinds of biblical literature. The other kinds of biblical literature, the prophetic works, the narrative, the history, and so on, you have much more of a vertical kind of revelation of God. God is revealed in the narrative in the midst of human history, but it's God's intervention in that history. In the prophets, you have God saying, or the prophet says, the word of the Lord came to me. So it's a much more vertical kind of approach to revelation.

[12:58]

In the wisdom literature, biblical wisdom literature, the authority and the basis really is common human experience. How do you get to be wise? It's by living. That's part of why we associate wisdom with age, although you don't have to be old. The Book of Wisdom says some people can get wise much sooner. They experience faster or whatever. Now, that makes wisdom, the wisdom literature in the Old Testament, the most incarnational part of the Old Testament. It's the revelation of God in common human experience. But wisdom is also a gift. And in the Book of Wisdom, the author says, it's wise to know whose is the gift. And in Proverbs, we have a sentence that says, it's the Lord that gives wisdom.

[14:01]

So it's that wonderful tension between our ordinary, common, everyday human experience and the gift of God. But it's the gift of God in the midst of that daily living, or in the midst of the extraordinary thing that happens. But in whatever life brings us, Now because it's the revelation of God in common human experience, wisdom is really available to everyone. In the rest of biblical literature, you've got a concentration on salvation history and a chosen people and a people that God uses in order to bring revelation to the rest of the world. Wisdom is open to everybody. And so you get Egyptian wisdom and Babylonian wisdom and so on. Because of that, the heart of the wisdom revelation of God really is in creation and in human life, because that's what's available to everybody.

[15:16]

That's what we all know, and that's the way God is revealed through wisdom. Walter Brueggemann has a book This was before we all got sensitive to language. The name of the book is In Man We Trust, but it's a great book anyway. Brueggemann says that what the wisdom literature tells us is that God is willing to trust us even when we aren't trustworthy. That God gives us life and that God is willing to trust us with all those things that have to do with life. And to trust us to teach each other and to live life with each other. Now, something that you said, I think, about relationships.

[16:17]

Wisdom, since it's based on this common human experience, really does depend on relationships. on relationship with each other, on relationship with the rest of the created world, on relationship with God. Wisdom is in the relationships. It's in the intersection of our lives with all the rest of what we encounter, people, nature, God. Now, You've all lived in community long enough, and so have I, to know that anything that's based on common human experience and is dependent on relationships is bound to be ambiguous. Wisdom is not... Well, let me say it again the other way. Wisdom is ambiguous. A good example of that in the literature is a case where you have two proverbs.

[17:22]

One proverb says, don't answer a fool according to his folly, because you'll just be like him. And the other one says, answer a fool according to his folly, otherwise he's going to keep being in the midst of it. And they're right next to each other. So, do you answer a fool according to his folly, or do you not answer a fool according to his folly? You have to be wise to know how to use wisdom. Wisdom is ambiguous. So is life. So are relationships. But that's part of God's trusting us with life. That's part of what you were saying about the willingness to be surprised. That a real sign of wisdom is the willingness to be surprised. The goal of wisdom, and Roland Murphy probably is the primary promoter of this, the goal of wisdom is life. The goal of wisdom is the good life.

[18:25]

And it's the good life now. How can we really live well? That's the goal of wisdom. Now, the good life or how to live well is another phrase that is open to all kinds of interpretation. You know, what does it mean to live the good life? If you look at commercials and the back pages of Time Magazine and so on, you've got one example of what it means to have the good life or to live well. If you look at the life we're trying to live, that's another example of what is the good life and what does it mean to live well. It's based on common human experience. What is it to live well? But that is the goal of wisdom. Now, if wisdom is based on common human experience, the only way we could have defined it is the way we did, through each other's experience.

[19:33]

If I had defined wisdom, that wouldn't have been based on the common human experience in this room. But if we pool all our common human experience, then that's how we arrive at wisdom. Now, I want to weave in another thread here. We've got a little basis on what wisdom is. My community is in the process of re-examining our monastic identity. What does it mean for us to be monastic women at the end of the 20th century? What are we going to take into the 21st century? And in the course of doing this, they asked me if I would give a talk on what monastic life is going to look like in the 21st century. I don't know what monastic life is going to look like in the 21st century, but I tried to dredge up some common human experience, and a sister from Tucson, a Benedictine of perpetual adoration, said to me, well, you know, the difference between apostolic life and monastic life is that the apostolic way

[20:55]

is based on evangelical counsels and the goal really is to spread the kingdom of God. Whereas monastic life is based on wisdom and the goal is to establish or reflect the kingdom of God in our own little place, whatever the places we have, we're a little reflection of the kingdom of God and people come to us. So I went home and thought about that. And I think that it really is true. We've said for centuries that the rule is a wisdom book. But if you go back and take the basics about wisdom, the goal of wisdom is the good life. The goal of monastic life is the good life. It's how to live well. And that's really what Benedict is trying to say to us in the prologue.

[21:58]

Who is there who longs for life? Come. So how do we find the good life? That's what we came looking for. That's what we're trying to do in monastic life. It's really, and I was struck by the table reading tonight, That line about the students come and they pray with us and then they go away and they come back again a year later and discover there's still somebody here praying. Stability really is what enables us to live the good life. to try to live the good life, to try to find what it means to live well. It's trying to live the good life with one specific group of people in one specific place at one specific time. Now, if the basis of wisdom is common human experience, then

[23:02]

What we do in monastic life, whenever something important is to be decided, we call everybody together. We're supposed to listen to everybody, even the youngest, because God sometimes reveals to the younger. It's the common human experience. I remember realizing In my own monastic life, I'd been in community for a long time, when all of a sudden it hit me that obedience didn't only mean that I do what I'm told, but that it meant I had to share my piece of the wisdom. that if I didn't contribute, then my obedience wasn't complete. So obedience is really the way, the obedience and the sharing together, the discernment that we do, is the way that we live a life of wisdom. It's through that shared common human experience.

[24:08]

Sister Gertrude Wemhoff came to our community one time to help us with discernment for election of a prioress. And she was in front of the community, and there was a vase of flowers sitting in front of her. And she said, you know, I can tell you what that vase of flowers looks like, and I'm right. But if you don't tell me what it looks like, and you don't tell me, and you don't tell me, then I only know this side of it. that it takes all of us. It's that shared common human experience and that's certainly a primary element of monastic life. The book of Proverbs tells us that the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. It's the beginning of wisdom to know that wisdom is a gift. to know that our goal to live the good life and our sharing the common human experience is not enough, that it is the gift of God.

[25:19]

And I think, you can see where I'm going, once I got started I've done stability and obedience, I think that really is somehow at the heart of our conversatio, of our intent to continue to live the monastic life, and as Benedict says, the first degree of humility is fear of the Lord, that we live it in the presence of God, we come to seek God, we turn and return to God, and we turn each other around on our way to God. I really learned, I think, what fear of the Lord is, at least how to talk about it from our novices. I get the privilege of teaching the novices every once in a while, and they teach me more than I teach them most of the time. But one of them one day said, well, the only way I can talk about fear of the Lord is to say, oh my God.

[26:25]

I thought, that's what it is. Oh my God. And then several years later, another novice said to me, well, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom leads to knowing the Lord, leads to the knowledge of God. To know God is to love God. And so the more we know God, the more we love God. And the love of God leads us back to deeper fear of the Lord, because it's back to deeper awe, it's the wonder you were talking about. And so it's really, it's like a spiral that fear of the Lord leads us to wisdom, leads us to know God, leads us to love God, leads us to deeper fear of the Lord, and it continues through our whole life. And that's what I think the monastic life is doing for us, is leading us to ever deeper fear of the Lord, which really is the awe of love.

[27:42]

There's a line in Psalm 130, which, well, I've been chewing on this line for about four years and I'm not finished yet. You know, Psalm 130 begins, out of the depths I cry to you, and then says, you know, if you, O Lord, count our sins, who could survive? But with you is forgiveness, and therefore we fear you. Now you'd think we'd fear God because God was going to judge us or count our sins. But the psalm says, you forgive us and therefore we fear you. Forgiveness is almost more than we can take.

[28:46]

It leads us to a much greater fear of the Lord, a much greater awe in the presence of God. I don't know if you know either the book or the play Les Miserables, but Jean Valjean is pursued all the way through his life by this police or this official, whose name I've lost. Finally, when they meet, Jean Valjean, the one who's been being pursued, is in control, and this pursuer thinks he's going to kill him, and instead he forgives him. And this man who's pursued him his whole life can't take the forgiveness, and so he kills himself. It's the awe of being forgiven really does require

[29:48]

an opening in us. So I think that's the... the essence, really, of monastic life as wisdom-based, that the goal of monastic life is the good life. It is to live well. The basis is common human experience, and the beginning and then throughout is fear of the Lord. You want to say anything about that before I? I want to say a few things then about the wisdom woman, but you're all either nodding or mad at me. As we take somebody, then we feel free. But, you know, the Spirit of the Lord has to be taught.

[30:51]

Naturally, it's not terror. It's something that we learn. It's taught. I think that's true. That's part of the wisdom that we learn from each other. And from those who have had experience, then we learn it from them. In connection with that, he needed another religion credit and he'd heard that I wasn't too awful. Prophets wasn't his primary interest, getting the third religion credit was. But anyway, we did Amos, then we got to Hosea, and God threatens and then forgives. And so Mike said, you know, a good parent, if you threaten, you should follow through. So God should be careful.

[31:52]

Well, we went through all the prophets, and every prophet, God threatens them and then forgives them. And so Mike worried about God through the whole class. Well, we got to Jonah at the end. Well, of course, you know, the whole point of Jonah is that God forgives the Ninevites, and Jonah's off there sitting on that hill, pouting because God's forgiven them. Mike just slammed his book shut, and he said, there he goes again. Well, at the end, I said, I always ask them, what's the most important or challenging or whatever thing you learned in this class? And he said, well, you know what mine is. I know they taught me God forgives us. I just didn't know God did it all the time. But we have to be taught that too, the fear of the Lord. As we go through talking about wisdom, this is the third thing I'm going to braid in here, and then we'll spend the rest of the days unbraiding all of these, is the image of the wisdom woman.

[33:08]

The book of Proverbs presents, as you know, two female images for the young man who is learning how to be wise. One is the wisdom woman and one is folly. In the long term, in the wisdom tradition, folly disappears after Proverbs, but the wisdom woman as a figure for this attribute of God continues to grow throughout the literature. But in Proverbs, she appears as a prophet. She's out on the street preaching, and she calls to people, especially the simple, and she says, How long, you simple ones, will you love inanity? How long will you turn away at my reproof? Lo, I will pour out to you my spirit. I will acquaint you with my words.

[34:12]

So she's pouring out her spirit. It's really the Spirit of God that's being poured out by wisdom. It's the Spirit of God that rushes upon David when he's anointed. It's the Spirit of God that fills the judges so that they can go out and save the people. It's the same Spirit of God that wisdom is pouring out. It's the Spirit that gives us life. And so it's the goal of wisdom. And wisdom is going to pour out her spirit on us. In chapter 8, she sings a hymn about herself. She tells us all the benefits that she gives. She tells us that any good thing that we do, we do through her literally it says by me kings king and nobles noble and so on you get the same word twice you can't do it in english but by me kings reign and nobles all the rulers of the earth lawgivers establish justice princes govern and so on so whatever it is that we do and that we do well it is wisdom in us doing that

[35:34]

She says, those who love me, I also love, and those who seek me, find me. And then she says that she was there at the beginning of creation. The Lord begot me, the firstborn of His ways, the forerunner of His prodigies of long ago. She's there when everything is created. She says, then I was beside God as His designer. and I was his delight day by day, playing before God all the while, playing on the surface of the earth, and I found delight in human beings." She says that if we find her, we find life and win favor from God. But those who miss me harm themselves, and all who hate me love death."

[36:37]

So the choice is life or death. Wisdom is the one who leads to life. Those who find me find life. But those who miss me harm themselves. And you know the Hebrew word for sin means to miss the mark. It's the same word. And so those who miss wisdom, you get this little echo that says, whoops, you've strayed off, and that way is death. There are two tables spread before us in this book. One is the table of wisdom and one is the table of folly. Those who eat at wisdom's table find life. Those who eat at folly's table go down to death. So the goal of wisdom is the good life. What I'd like to do for the rest of the week is unpack that, or for the rest of the two or three days.

[37:48]

So, and on your little schedule, I've kind of indicated the directions I'm going to be going. A lot of what I'm going to do is simply drawing the images and then It's your common experience that's going to make the difference with that. So tomorrow morning we'll look at wisdom as the tree of life. And if you care to read some of those passages, great. If you do not care to, that's fine too. I'd like to end tonight with the O Anaphan. I know it's not Advent, but it is wisdom. A wisdom proceeding from the mouth of the Most High, announced by the prophets, come, teach us the way of salvation.

[38:58]

Come, Lord, come to save us. If you want to say anything, feel free. Otherwise, I'm finished.

[39:17]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JG