Lady Wisdom: A Guided Meditation

Proverbs 9: 1-6

 Lady Wisdom

Lady Wisdom: A Guided Meditation

Proverbs 9:1-6

         The book of Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings and poems compiled over a period of several hundred years, some of which may go back to the days of King Solomon’s court.  In Proverbs’ opening chapters, wisdom is personified as a woman created “before the beginning of the earth” (8: 22-23).  Lady Wisdom, or “Sophia” in the Greek, has been linked to the "Word" in John’s Gospel, (“Logos” in the Greek), which was with God from the beginning. Some groups in Judaism and early Christianity considered Sophia to be a significant religious figure, though our English translations fail to retain her explicitly feminine character except in a few passages like this one.  Funny how the feminine images of God are easily recognized as metaphors, but the masculine images for the divine remain literalized.  Recently, however, there has been a renewed appreciation for long neglected feminine images of the sacred, as exemplified in the hymn to Holy Wisdom we sang earlier.
         Did you notice the way Lady Wisdom also resembles Jesus?  In today’s reading she’s associated with feeding others, as was Jesus, who invited all, especially the least, to the great banquet of God.  Like Jesus, whose life and death and resurrection we memorialize at this very table, Lady Wisdom set her sumptuous but simple table with bread and wine. 
         The writer of Proverbs describes Lady Wisdom sending out her invitation into the town.  Wisdom’s voice can be heard by the foolish and immature on the ordinary streets of their ordinary lives. In the ordinariness of our daily lives, we, too, can hear wisdom’s call.
         Some believe listening to life is the key to spiritual growth.  We can listen to ancient insights found in scripture, to the circumstances of our lives, to the people in our lives whom we love and respect and the enemies who nevertheless have lessons for us, too.  Sometimes the things we really don’t want to hear are the words we most need to hear. Lady Wisdom calls us to turn off the harmful tapes we unthinkingly keep playing in our heads, to hear the murmurs of this world with a heart full of Christ’s compassion, to listen to our lives as a spiritual discipline that can make us “willing to change ourselves and our world” (Muller 19). 

         One reason we come to this place and this table each week is to listen.  The “Sabbath is an incubator for wisdom. When we allow the rush and pressure of our days to fall away, even for a short period, we are more able to discern the essential truth of what lies before us” (Muller 165).  If we can pause from life’s distractions, listen for what is true about ourselves and our world, we will hear Lady Wisdom summoning us to a banquet already available to us.  But our meal with Wisdom must begin by knowing and accepting the generous compassion being extended to us. 

         I invite you now to do a very hard thing.  Richard Rohr says, “The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us wants to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface. We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our self-doubt.”

         So let us hold silence to contemplate a boundless love that is our origin and our destiny. I invite you to imagine God’s love pouring over you like warm waves that calm you and flow through you to others.  There is no fear in this place. Worries are washed away, our need to control and to know with certitude flow away and compassion for ourselves and others flows in and through us. Feel these waves of love and care.
SILENCE
         Immersed in divine love, we can move into deeper waters of discernment.  I’ll use the famous Serenity Prayer as our guide.  It might very well be titled the Wisdom prayer. Let me read it to you:

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.  (Reinhold Niebuhr) 

         Wisdom is the lynchpin of this prayer.

         Pause now to consider:  What is one thing, a fairly important thing, you know you cannot change about yourself?  This is something you’d like to change but you cannot.   SILENCE
         What is one thing you can change? This is something you really want to change and though it would be difficult, it would be possible to change.  SILENCE
         With Lady Wisdom at your side, ask yourself how certain you are that the first thing is impossible to change and the second thing is doable?  Great wisdom is needed to tell the difference between what we can and cannot change.  Pause now.  Are you sure you’ve placed these two things you would like to change in their proper categories?  Maybe there’s something in your life you really can change but you’d nearly given up on doing so.  Maybe there’s something in your life you need to accept with grace and then recognize it may hold some gift for you.
         Fortunately, at the core of Christianity is the sense of community, so our task of discernment is both individual and communal.  We can bring others into our discernment processes. 
         And we as a faith community can continually ask probing questions together about our church.  According to a study Diana Butler Bass conducted of fifty remarkably vital congregations, one characteristic these churches all had in common was the regular practice of discerning, together, what steps they would take into the future.  These vital churches regularly planned times to ask questions of God and then listen carefully for God’s wisdom for their congregation: Who are we?  What does God want us to do? These churches practiced discernment by telling stories together; asking straightforward questions together; listening deeply, respectfully and empathically to one another; praying together with a genuine desire to find and follow a common path.  They regularly scheduled opportunities to do these things together as a way to make important decisions and achieve greater focus.
         But beware. Discernment for churches and individuals usually does not simply confirm our hunches.  Instead, it is a perilous practice that involves honesty, attentiveness, and risk.  And it often redirects our lives.  Discernment led me, as a contented 40-something English teacher, to give up my profession and pay check and become a seminary student.  Discernment has led some congregations to take unpopular stands and make difficult choices. 
         With Wisdom comes the obligation to deal with life head on, with open eyes and honest heart and courageous conviction. It is wisdom who calls us, who calls whole congregations, to reach the fullness of our humanity.  
Let us pray:

O Wisdom, may each choice we make be governed by your Spirit.  We pray this in the name of the one who was your Word and Wisdom made flesh.  Amen.

Bass, Diana Butler.  Christianity for the Rest of Us.  New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Muller, Wayne.  Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives.  New York:   Bantam, 1999.

Rohr, Richard. “Silence” Richard’s Daily Meditations. (August 19, 2012).                  http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Daily-Meditation--Silence----August-19--            2012.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=L1hBBRwDOSU