ORDINARY WISDOM

A Homily by
James Ishmael Ford
5 January 2003

I vividly remember the popular bumper stickers of my youth. "Preserve the right to bear arms" and its corollary, "Preserve the right to arm bears." "America, love it or leave it." And, back in the San Francisco Bay Area, "All hail the cosmic one mind." If you think about it, this is a fascinating phenomenon. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that not long ago there was even a coffee table book "Bumper Sticker Wisdom: America’s Pulpit above the Tailpipe" by Carol Gardner.

These sayings by turns are silly, mean spirited, generous and wise. "I haven’t been the same since that house fell on my sister" "Commit random acts of kindness and senseless beauty" "Real men don’t ask for directions" "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" "Jesus is coming, look busy." And, of course, that Unitarian Universalist favorite, "Give me ambiguity or give me something else"

So, on the one hand, as we read those sayings we encounter America’s pulpit above the tailpipe. But, on the other hand, "Buyer beware." Or, as perhaps my favorite bumper sticker of all time says, "Don’t believe everything you think."

So what is it with these bumper stickers? Why so many? What is it all about? My feeling is such things flow out of a natural human need. We need to put things together, our thoughts, our feelings, presenting them succinctly, telegraphically. Certainly, when we consider the collected wisdom of our religious culture, particularly aspects of the Bible that distillation of the western Way, we see how this is a very old thing.

Most people who take an interest in the Hebrew Bible, the so-called Old Testament quickly learn how it is organized. First, there is the Torah, the Pentateuch, those five books that contain the oral traditions and the rule books. Then there are the Prophetic writings, all those "The Lord said" documents. And then there is a great hodgepodge called simply, "The Writings."

But, most important for today’s purposes, within the "Writings" there is something called the "Wisdom Literature." Here we find the mother of all bumper sticker collections. And here we find how we might engage sayings and catch phrases that are meant to point us toward important things.

While those parts that are called wisdom are in fact scattered throughout the Bible, from some of the Psalms to the book of James in the New Testament, what is generally called Wisdom is limited to three canonical books, "Proverbs," "Job" and "Ecclesiastes." Now, if you were raised Catholic or Christian Orthodox, you might also recall "Sirach" and the "Wisdom of Solomon" which opens a footnote on Biblical scholarship.

In the third century before the Common Era the Jewish community produced a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. This was called the "Septuagint," from the story, perhaps mythical, of the team of seventy translators. It contained "Sirach," the "Wisdom of Solomon" and a handful of other texts we do not currently find in either the Jewish or Protestant canon.

What happened was that four hundred years after the "Septuagint," following the destruction of the Temple and the sacking of Jerusalem near the end of the first century of our Common Era, as part of trying to find a post-Temple Judaism, Jewish scholars revisited the sacred texts. And one thing they did was delete those books that did not seem to have Hebrew originals.

That’s when "Sirach" and "The Wisdom of Solomon" disappeared from the new canon, which is called the "Massoretic" text. While there was some debate about "Proverbs" and "Ecclesiastes," not around historicity, but rather for reasons we’ll see as we go on, they were kept as texts of the Bible. This is true today for both the Jewish and Protestant communities. Catholics and the Orthodox, however, continue to draw upon the older "Septuagint" as the source for their Bible. Footnote, as I said, but perhaps useful.

It seems fairly clear the "Proverbs" are the oldest of the Wisdom documents. Then, in order of composition, "Job," and finally "Ecclesiastes." The "Proverbs" are the pithy sayings, the bumper stickers of early Jewish spiritual thought. "Job" is a much longer piece, a literary form, possibly even a play. And "Ecclesiastes" is a philosophical treatise.

So, here we begin with telegrams from the heart, short, brief, to the point. But, then at some point we need to engage these things, these intuitions of our deepest reflections imaginatively. Perhaps the next step from a bumper sticker saying is a poem, a story, a play. Finally, as we sit with these things, as we imaginatively engage them, we unravel the consequences, and we come to a mature reflection.

So, we have the wisdom of the "Proverbs." "Lazy hands make one poor, but diligent hands bring wealth." "Whosoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for God, but whoever is kind to the needy honors the divine." And "Whosoever pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honor."

By the way it turns out these sayings echo and sometimes actually quotes sayings from Egypt, Mesopotamia and other ancient Near Eastern cultures. Even the book of "Job" may not have been originally a Jewish text. Our Jewish ancestors simply took wisdom where they found it, as a common human inheritance. Not a bad idea.

It really doesn’t matter where wisdom saying come from. Either they work, or they don’t. We can read contemporary collections of wise sayings like H. Jackson Brown’s "Life’s Little Instruction Book," where he tells his son and us, "Complement three people every day," "Over tip breakfast waitresses," "Say please a lot," "Watch a sunrise at least once a year," and "Learn to play a musical instrument," and then we weigh for ourselves whether or not there is something of value in these sayings.

We can take these bumper stickers all around us, America’s tail pipe pulpit, read them: and some earn a chuckle, others we dismiss out of hand, some we sit with for a while, while others can become guideposts for us on our way.

Again, the Wisdom literature itself can help us as we consider, as we weigh, as we decide what to embrace, what to hold for a while, and what to reject. First, does this distilled saying have to do with our real lives, and how to live well? So, "Visualize whirled peas," may puncture the pretensions of "visualize world peace," but we probably don’t need to add it to our canon of contemporary Proverbs.

On the other hand, perhaps "Live Simply that others may simply live," while undoubtedly needing further nuancing has a more compelling quality. So, for us, as for the ancient compilers of Biblical wisdom literature, the first principle must be: is it practical? This is the foundation of the wisdom way, does it have to do with our real lived lives? Is it practical?

The Wisdom way is rooted in the twin strands of tradition and observation. These things, tradition, what our people have done in the past and observation of what is actually happening, become correctives each for the other. When we rely upon both tradition and observation they become vital and dynamic aspects of our own possible living path to ordinary wisdom.

Still, ultimately it all needs to be rooted in something. And, I think, as people of faith, as people seeking meaning and purpose in our lives we are called to consider what that root might be. The practical, the traditional, the observable, all rise out the rich dark soil of existence, of our natural lives, of our birth and our knowing of our death.

In most sacred traditions this rootedness is called God. But in the spirit of the wisdom way we shouldn’t cling to names here. We are, after all, talking about something deeper than our knowing. This starting point is the ground of our experience, of our thinking, of our feeling. The root finds its place in the dark, in the unknowing of our primal experience.

Commenting on this way and contrasting it to the Greek philosophical traditions, philosopher Tom Kerns points out "In Plato’s cave story… true wisdom is… found heading upward, out into the light, and from there up to the top of the mountain. (But in the wisdom of Job, for instance, we find wisdom) is found down deep in the earth, mined (as Kerns suggests) from the earth as are jewels and precious metals."

I think this downward path is metaphorically the right direction, although personally I find the metaphor of root a little more helpful than jewel. This wisdom we seek is organic, natural, our inheritance from the birthing of time.

Now if we do these things, seek our wisdom in the ordinary, among our friends and companions, and indeed, among all our neighbors on this planet, if we recall the teachings of our parents and what we actually encounter in our lives, and if we remember that we are part of something larger than our egos that we are rooted all of us in the same rich dark soil that gives us birth and sustains us and at the right time embraces us once again: then we truly are on a path of wisdom.

At least that’s what I have to say. Ours is a faith that really does draw upon direct experience as well as received wisdom. I’ve been called to this pulpit in an act of trust to share the deep as best I understand it. But, each of us in this community is also called, called to reflect, to think and to act by our best lights.

So, today we honor that by opening the conversation. What are your bumper stickers? What sayings guide you? Or, do you find this all a crock? Perhaps you have some other perspective? This is a time each of us may speak. All we ask is some brevity, focus of thought on the subject at hand, and just a little kindness for each other. But, within those bounds of relationship, what can you share on our common path to wisdom?

(Conversational Reflections)

We didn’t have time in this reflection to consider how this practical and ordinary wisdom was personified in the ancient scriptures as a divine feminine, the holy Sophia. But let’s conclude our time together with words of praise for what it is she offers.

Who comes from God, as word and breath?
Holy wisdom.
Who holds the keys of life and death?
Mighty Wisdom.
Crafter and creator too,
Eldest, she makes all things new;
She ordains what God will do,
Wisest one, radiant one,
Welcome, holy wisdom / great Sophia!

Amen.