“I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through. Listen to this music.” –Hafiz

Today was the third meeting of our group, and the format we followed was:

• 20 minute comtemplative sit
• topic to discuss
• pot luck dinner and fellowship

In attendance were Ed and Carol, Rick and Pam, and Rosemary.  The evening flowed nicely, and the discussion was lively!  It’s nice to get to know each other as we share this journey.

Ed shared the following poem by Hafiz, which was the basis for our discussion:

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.

Happy Independence Day weekend everyone.  Rick will be in touch with details of our next meeting, but mark your calendars now.  We meet the first Saturday of the month, and that will be August 6, 2016 at 4pm.

The Wisdom tradition underlies virtually all the great world religions, East and West. In the East, it is very much in the mainstream; in the West, it has taken a distinctly back-seat role. For example, in Western Christianity, it was all but exterminated by about 500 CE, but bubbled along deep underground, punctuated by flashes of brilliance from the likes of Teresa of Ávila, Meister Eckhart and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing.

When we speak of Wisdom in these pages, we are not speaking of generic wisdom, as in something one acquires as one gets older. Nor are we speaking of some esoteric, secret way, nor is it a synonym for the “contemplative life,” although the Wisdom path can be esoteric and is almost always contemplative.  A definition can be difficult to pin down, perhaps due to its presence in so many diverse forms.  My working understanding is that Wisdom is not about different or higher or secret knowledge, but  deeper, more complete ways of knowing. It is knowing in all three of the ancient seats of intelligence: mind, boday and hEart.

Cynthia Borgeault, in her book The Wisdom Way of Knowing (Jossey-Bass, 2003), offers a more tchnical definition. She writes that Wisdom is

“a precise and comprehensive science of spiritual transformation that has existed since the headwaters of the great world religions and is in fact their common ground. This science includes both theory and practice. The theory part consists of a unified cosmology—in other words, a comprehensive vision of our human purpose and destiny. The practice involves a systematic training for growing into that purpose.”

I hope we can share ideas, experiences and resources in the pages of this blog.  Please comment and let us know what you think.