Blogging toward Sunday
Wisdom seems like something you find after many years, something elusive, like an old Indian in a cave in the desert. You might have to fast if you want to get a glimpse of her, or trek up to an altitude of 20,000 feet to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal, lead a contemplative life, do lots of reading. So it’s surprising to open up the book of Proverbs and find Wisdom in the busiest place in town—“beside the gates…at the entrance of the portals”—perhaps even at the market, where people go to sell things and buy things. We can imagine someone hocking watches to her left, a hot dog vendor to her right. She’s indiscriminate—she calls out to the dullards, the dolts and the fools, offering her companionship to ANYONE, being AVAILABLE and LOUD, a woman yelling in the street.
What possible sort of wisdom can one offer in such a noisy place—certainly not a dharma talk or a discourse on beauty, but maybe “Watch where you’re walking, be careful with your wallet, don’t cross now, the light’s red”—the sort of thing you get out of the book of Proverbs—practical stuff that can feel trite if what you’re after is the secrets of the universe. It’s almost surprising to find these little maxims canonized in scripture; Proverbs might do better as a pocket-sized book available at the Barnes and Nobles checkout counter.
If the book is mostly a collection of black and white dogmas, however, and what seem like static little moral truths, it’s sort of wild to find Wisdom here, alive on the street, moving and gesturing and eager to love anyone who will love her.
