Wisdom to Know the Difference

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

This was the first prayer I learned. Not the Lord's Prayer. No. In a family of atheists, the Lord's Prayer was never mentioned or repeated by rote at dinner and before bed. But we did have coasters and magnets with the serenity prayer all over the house. I don't know where they all came from; perhaps my grandmother just left behind these odds and ends with the serenity prayer on them on her visits. "When will you leave?" my dad would ask her. And she, to his frustration: "when the wind changes." What time was this? Before scheduled plane tickets? Or was she just above such mundane concerns as being tied to a travel schedule? That had to take some serenity.

Today this prayer has risen to the surface because I have been dwelling on reconciliation. And not just reconciliation, but true reconciliation. What is true reconciliation?

In theology, we know it to be a process. To speak of reconciliation, as if it is a state of being, or an event, is misleading. It would be more accurate to speak of reconciling, of being reconciled, and to reconcile oneself to, with, for. The serenity prayer, while it asks for serenity, courage and wisdom, only asks for those as we accept, change and know. We cannot have serenity, courage and wisdom unless we are living into accepting, changing, knowing. Motion, in other words, sometimes physical, sometimes emotional, sometimes tangible, sometimes invisible, but always visceral - if we let ourselves really live.

In politics, reconciliation is too often an event- if the word is used at all. More often we talk of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and the like. But these words are about as akin to reconciliation as nonviolence is to satygraha. They are mechanical. And yet, beneath these functional words, there is a fundamental interest in reconciliation. If this were not the case, how could anyone persist in studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the long term?

I spent the morning in my last class at Colorado College, listening to my students present caes of self-determination and intervention throughout the world. Their studies ranged from Kashmir, Bosnia, Colombia, to Costa Rica and Greenland. Most of the students were discouraged by the results of these conflicts, and discouraged by the genuine potential for the peaceful resolution of conflicts internationally. Only one student had the courage to ask, with a smile that indicated he was envisioning something, "what would happen if states actually gave up nuclear weaspons? What would the world be like?"

I am beginning to think that questions like that are the ones that cut through the clutter of conflict resolution and into the true questions of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not a place to arrive at. It is not peace as the absence of war. It is a transformed state of affairs and a transforming process we participate in. Participation is key.

"What if the world actually put down their nuclear weapons?" Why is this question different? Because we do not know the answer. We ask it; we draw a rational blank. But doesn't some image come to your mind?

Ask it to yourself again: "What if the world actually put down their nuclear weapons?"

What do you see?

This is a discernment question. Questions we do not know the answer to are the only ones that help us understand our calls in the world. And we ask these questions in community. We turn to one another and ask each other, "what are your questions?" It matters that we are asking the questions just as much as the open-ended nature of the question matters.

I wonder if these could be the missing pieces: imagination, questions that at first seem to elude us, and asking questions of each other. Could this be reconciliation?

Wisdom at a meal with the world

I have two obsessions: the Wisdom tradition, and the diverse tradition of meals in early Christianity.

(You will, I am sure, laugh at me later that I said I have merely two obsessions ... and I will welcome that).

But let me tell you about these two to start with, as they are the ones that commanded the forefront of my mind when my friend, the author of "Lost and Found in the Sacred Temple," assumed I had a blog when I commented on hers. So I began to think, is it not time to start one?

Wisdom (or Sophia, in Greek) is sometimes understood as the Holy Spirit and sometimes as the eternal Logos. Both of these positions are controversial, but interesting. Before I get to them, this is what is absolutely true about Wisdom: she is portrayed as "she" in the Old Testament.

By the way, I'm not an early Christian scholar; if I must be a scholar, I am a scholar of the Reformations era, and even there I hesitate to call myself a scholar. I am, if anything, a contemplative who loves to sap up knowledge in order to run it through a sieve, leaving the essence of what is important ... and giving the details to someone else who has the gift for this.
So know that as I relate something of Sophia as the Holy Spirit.

Consider these ... (which I cannot take credit for finding; thanks to a prof I had in Tuebingen)

Wisdom 10:1 Wisdom protected the first‑formed father of the world, when he alone had been created; she delivered him from his transgression,

Sirach 1:4 Wisdom was created before all other things, and prudent understanding from eternity.

Wisdom 7:25 For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.

"Wisdom" doesn't neatly fit into the category of the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit - sometimes she runs through all, precedes all, feeds all. She is the fine thread weaving through the Trinity; she is the Trinity in herself. I have become fascinated with her since learning more of her last summer while in Tuebingen. There, the director of the Institute of Christian Origins gave a sermon about Wisdom ... asking those unresolved questions about her feminine nature, her eternal presence, her place in the making of the new covenant. The language used to describe Wisdom is mesmerizing. See for yourself in the Wisdom of Solomon ...

... and the Symposium term in the title of my blog. A "symposium" was one of many forms of ritualized meals in the early Christian era. These meals went by many names, had all sorts of customs and traditions. Another time I will write some more of these. What captures me about them is their diverse customs, the way they opened up the tradition and made it their own with their quirks, joys and local habits. This is how I believe tradition should be: alive. But also deeply revered. It is our place to reach into the complex web of tradition and pull on that one thread that is holding it together. It is that thread that will make the tradition ours and keep us grounded in wisdom's peace.

So, come join me in this continuing meal. Let's make it ours.