Scripture Reflections
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
— “The Real Work” by Wendell Berry
It seems all of us — you and me and most everyone else trying to navigate this maze called life — we are always in need of wisdom. Wisdom for how to live, and sometimes how to face the deaths that inevitably come our way (none of which ever feel quite like past losses we’ve known). How to endure the worm of cancer, or even just a toothache. How to make our way through adolescence, and eventually how to make our way through old age since what we learned as teenagers wears thin with time. Always the need remains: wisdom of any kind. And yet wisdom always seems to arrive after the fact. We’d prefer it before, or at least during. After is too late.
In one of the classic “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strips, Calvin is filling a water balloon at a tap. Instantly, we sense trouble ahead. He begins bargaining with the universe: “In order to determine if there is any universal moral law beyond human convention, I have devised the following test. I will throw this water balloon at Susie Durkins unless I receive some sign within the next 30 seconds that this is wrong. It is in the universe’s power to stop me. I’ll accept any remarkable physical happenstance as a sign.” Calvin starts timing the universe. When there’s no response, he cries with delight, “Time’s up! That proves it! There’s no moral law!”
Off he goes in great delight to find his nemesis, Susie Durkins. With sinister abandon, he hits her with the water balloon square in the back, only to find himself running from her irate clutches as he screams, “Help! Help! Help!” Of course there is no help forthcoming. The final frame finds Calvin dazed and pummeled by Susie and wondering, “Why does the universe always give you the sign AFTER you do it?”
This week’s reading from the Book of Wisdom resonates deeply with our ever-present hunger for wisdom. “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?” Amen, I say. Amen. Who can know? We stumble through life — through weakness, failure, sin. We know these things mess up our lives, yet it’s as if we’re caught in our own version of “Groundhog Day,” reliving the same mistakes in endless loops.
That same Scripture reading ends in a promise: “Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high? And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight.” Straight they may be, yet it still feels as though we’re groping our way home.
It may be, then, that groping is the way. Maybe feeling our way, quietly and slowly, is better than rushing headlong into blind alleys and dead ends. Wisdom is rarely obvious — otherwise, everyone would have it. It takes some silence to hear what Lady Wisdom might be telling us. And sometimes it means going where we do not want to go. And other times it takes some sitting with it until a new wind blows the fog away.
Sometimes, too, it can seem there is no best way, no way untainted by a catastrophe of one sort or another. Such was the situation in which Philemon found himself in this week’s second reading, an excerpt from a letter from St. Paul to that well-to-do citizen of Colossae.
Onesimus is a slave of Philemon who runs away and finds refuge with Paul. Paul teaches him about Jesus and baptizes him, then sends him back with a letter urging Philemon to receive Onesimus not as a slave but as a brother in Christ.
That then becomes Philemon’s dilemma. If he accepts Onesimus as a fellow believer without any punishment, every slave will be tempted to seek freedom and run away, knowing if caught there will be no punishment. On the other hand, if Philemon punishes Onesimus with the usual maiming of some sort, how will Philemon answer to Paul? Unfortunately, history does not tell us what Philemon decided to do.
Perhaps, then, the wisdom that is of God is born in the muddle — from the complexities of life, from its uncertainties and fears, from its failures more than from its successes. Then we find ourselves shaped as if by another hand, one that nudges us into fuller life and into a new and broader vision of that life. In the words of some anonymous wisdom-master:
The creek, old and gravel-throated, carried stories in its curling voice:
“Wisdom is not a flame,” it said, “but a stone that learns the shape of water.”
FOR REFLECTION:
- Sit quietly for a moment and recall a time when wisdom surprised you in the aftermath.
- Choose one place in your life that feels especially muddled right now. What might Lady Wisdom be whispering to you through the fog?
