Wisdom Capability

Tony Brennan and Dr Drasko Dizdar, TCEO

WISDOM PEDAGOGYWISDOM CAPABILITY

• explorations in awe and wonder, reverence• expansions- courage, knowledge and understanding• implications for teaching with discernment and wisdom

Awesome LiteratureTo see a world in a grain of sand,And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,And eternity in an hour.- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.   It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;   It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. - Gerald Manley Hopkins

Awesome MathsIn mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers or Fibonacci series or Fibonacci sequence are the numbers in the following integer sequence: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34, ….

A model for the pattern of florets in the head of a sunflower was proposed by H. Vogel in 1979.

Awesome ScienceGerald Schroeder, Jewish Scientist, formerly with MIT, now

with Weizmann Institute in Israel (in Compass Vol. 47. Winter 2013, p 23)

“The discoveries of science, those that explore the molecular complexity of biology, and those who probe the brain/ mind interface, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of an all encompassing wisdom that pervades the universe. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to have within it a level of information, of conscious wisdom. The information just appears as given, with no causal agent evident, as if it were an intrinsic facet of nature.”

Crab Nebula

Introducing

• Awe

• Reverence

• Courage

• Knowledge

• Understanding

• Discernment

• Wisdom

A reading from the book of Proverbs (8:22-31)

Wisdom was born before the earth was made.The Wisdom of God cries aloud:The Lord created me when his purpose first unfolded,before the oldest of his works.From everlasting I was firmly set,from the beginning, before earth came into being.The deep was not, when I was born,there were no springs to gush with water.Before the mountains were settled,before the hills, I came to birth;before he made the earth, the countryside,or the first grains of the world's dust.When he fixed the heavens firm, I was there,when he drew a ring on the surface of the deep,when he thickened the clouds above,when he fixed fast the springs of the deep,when he assigned the sea its boundaries– and the waters will not invade the shore –when he laid down the foundations of the earth,I was by his side, a master craftsman,delighting him day after day,ever at play in his presence,at play everywhere in his world,delighting to be with the sons of men.

Wisdom is integral to a life that is true, good and beautiful. It is the seventh and culminating gift of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the advocate and helper, the feminine divine.

Good Beauty Truth

God in God-Selfis pure mystery, made known to us in our terms but not on our terms.

The Holy Spirit

The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit- awe, reverence, courage, knowledge, understanding, discernment-

that grow into an abundance- wisdom

A neglected theology in western Christianity

St Peter’s Basilica, Rome

Spirited Snapshots

DISCERNMENT

REVERENCEAWE AND WONDER

COURAGE KNOWLEDGE

UNDERSTANDING

Isaiah 11:2-3

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him-- the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD-- And his delight shall be in the fear (awe) of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; (called discernment).” Isaiah 11:2-3:

St Paul 1 Cor 12

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

A Wisdom Spirituality

Three journeys of the spiritual life:• In the journey to seek the

True Self, one departs from loneliness and seeks solace.

• In the journey to seek true relationship with others, one departs from hostility and seeks hospitality.

• In the journey to seek the True God, one departs from illusions and seeks presence and prayer.

Source: Henri Nouwen

A Sapiential Method and ProcessSapiential Cardijn Kant and

LonerganAwe and wonder See Be attentive

Reverence See

Courage See

Knowledge Judge Be intelligent

Understanding Judge Be reasonable

Discernment See- Judge- Act

Wisdom Act: do and be Be responsible

We need- active contemplatives, young and old- Those who live wisely in their doing and their being• Young dreamers who dream of who they can be ((seeking the truth about self)• Mature Prophets who stand for victims (seeking the truth about others)• Elders, who call us to let go of our illusions ((seeking the truth about God)

A wise pedagogy integrates …Four intelligences and a learning

dynamic in every lesson The whole learner

Symbols

Intelligence

Kant & Lonergan

L-Words

Human

SQSpiritual

Be attentive

IQCognitive

Be intelligent

EQEmotional

Be reasonable

PQPhysical

Be responsible

Wisdom to Shame the WiseSeiger Koder, Holocaust Rohr’s Reverse Theology

1 Cor 21-25: For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

God’s Wisdom is not this world’s wisdom, but something much more subversive of the way we do the world, and society and religion and the way we work out who we are and how we’re meant to live.

Wisdom Shift to Shame the ‘wise’Standard Worldview Sapiential WorldviewA self-contained, closed and self-fulfilling view.

Nothing is complete in itself – an open system.

Defensive structures and top-down leadership.

Flexible structures & empowering leadership.

Operates on the law of cause and effect. Observes more complex interdependence.Matter is dead and inert-ordered. The universe is alive and chaotically

ordered.Metaphor is the controllable machine. Metaphor is the biosphere (holon/ whole).Hostile view of strangers, outsiders. Seeks new interaction. Inclusive.Nothing really changes. Business as usual. Change is real/essential. Change is life.Creation by God is a literal past event. God continually co-creates and begets life.Life is getting more chaotic; devolving. Out of chaos, evolves new creation, order.‘Divide and conquer’. ‘Live and let live’. Non-violence, sides with

victimTake correct safe paths. Explore new risky paths.‘Show no emotion’. ‘Trust and share feelings’.Worries the world might change the Church. Welcomes the world as arena for the Church.Scarcity Abundance

The Fruits of the Spirit

1 Corinthians 1: 18-31

18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.26 Consider your own call, brothers and sisters:[g] not many of you were wise by human standards,[h] not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, 29 so that no one[i] might boast in the presence of God. 30 He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in[j] the Lord.”

Christ the Power

and Wisdom

of God

The Fruits of the Spirit

The Wisdom of Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton wrote:From moment to moment, I remember with surprise, that I am satisfied even though everything is not yet fulfilled. I lack nothing. Ominino replete me: he (God) fills me totally. Sapientia (wisdom) is sapor boni (savouring the good) … to know and taste the secret good that is present.

– A Search for SolitudeThomas Merton prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.I do not see the road ahead of me.I cannot know for certain where it will end.Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.But I believe that the desire to please you does indeed please you. I pray that I will never do anything apart from that desire. Amen.

Recommended Reading• James Alison (1998) Knowing Jesus, Templegate: London• Joan Chittester (2012) Following the Path: The Search for a Life of

Passion, Purpose, and Joy, Random House: New York• Thomas Merton (2007) New Seeds of Contemplation, New

Directions: USA• Thomas Merton (1996) A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's

True LifeThe Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3: 1952-1960, HarperCollins: New York

• Henri Nouwen (1975) Reaching Out: The three movements of the spiritual life, Doubleday , New York

• Richard Rohr (2011) Falling Upwards, a spirituality for the two halves of life, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco