Photo credit: Linda DeGraf

October 2016

Dear Friends ~ As I write, the wind stirs leaves barely tinged with autumn color as a steady rain soaks into the earth so recently parched by summer’s sun.  On the cusp of seasonal change, the land seems poised between fecundity and hibernation.   So we too live our lives poised between action and contemplation, in that silent space of longing, expectation, and hope.  Wisdom is both a mystic’s way of being in that sacred space and a gift of the spirit that we seek to cultivate.  According to psychologists, wisdom “involves an integration of knowledge, experience, and deep understanding that incorporates tolerance for the uncertainties of life…and it confers a sense of balance.”

We are knee-deep in a river, searching for water,” writes Kabir Helminski, a contemporary Wisdom teacher in the Sufi  lineage, using a vivid image to capture the irony of our contemporary plight.  The sacred road maps of wholeness still exist in the cosmos…But to read the clues it is first necessary to bring the heart and mind and body into balance, to awaken.  Then the One can be known—not in a flash of mystical vision but in the clarity of unitive seeing.

~ Cynthia Bourgeault in THE WISDOM WAY OF KNOWING

 

A holy and disciplined mind turns

   from ignorance and falsehood,

ignoring their myriad distractions,

   while the soul stands firm, allowing

          Wisdom to have her way.

~ from WALKING WITH WISDOM by Nan Merrill