Edward O.  Wilson goes on to say, “The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”  I remember my dad saying, “what good is book-smarts if don’t have any street-smarts”.  He was talking about application – what we do with the information we have. Smarts that you got to earn by experience, by living it, by getting a tooth knocked out, by having a blight in your only crop, by sitting next to a loved one as they pass to the other side of life. What is wisdom?  It’s the gift of learning from the counsel of the elders.  Those who have won hard fought discernment that comes with a history of making impossible choices: some brave, some foolish, but always evaluating and reforming. Those who have cultivated their own honor by honoring the One who from whom all wisdom comes, the God who is before all things and remains after all things.  Wisdom comes, sometimes without even knowing it after long nights of prayer and waiting and listening and trusting.

We’ve each had brushes with wisdom – a word that came at the right time, in the right place.  Maybe something a parent or grandparent instructed, a precisely timed question from an aunt or uncle, a new way of seeing that an older brother or sister shared, a comment after a lecture from a professor, a memory of that old sage who used to live next door, something golden you gained by simply being next to a treasured mentor.  We’ve each had brushes with wisdom for which we were starving.  We hold closely to these nourishing encounters and they continue to nourish us like bread that multiplies.

Read “Wisdom Pt 3 : Jesus – the Foolish Wisdom of God.”

Read wisdom from the “Wisdom Potluck”