In our global diversity, wisdom can be a unifying force. Wisdom is “that which holds all things together” (Wis. 1:7) – indeed, holds all of us together – those who follow the hochma of sacred Torah, those who abide in the Sophia of Christ, those obedient to the teachings of the Qur’an, those animated by the works of the Sufi poets Rumi and al’ Arabi, and all who seek the truth.
None of us, no single religious tradition, knows Wisdom fully (Sir. 24:28), but we do know where to find her. Both the Hebrew book of Proverbs and the Greek book of Wisdom say she “sits at the gate” (Wis. 6:14, Prov. 8:3). Wisdom, then, is found in liminal places – at thresholds – maybe even on the Red Brick Wall, keeping watch as you move from within to without.
There’s a poem in the book of Proverbs (8:22-31) about the very first, the primal, threshold moment of the universe. Here Wisdom herself speaks. She is the first of God’s creative acts. She tells of participating as God’s “confidant” (Tanakh version) or “master worker” (NRSV) when God calls everything else in creation into being – rivers and seas, skies and stars, opossums and people. The works of creation fill her with such exuberance and delight that she plays like a child and makes the earth her playground.
Spirit at Play
It was Wisdom’s spirit of play that led me to a threshold moment some twenty years ago. It was early June, before most schools had let out, and our family was camping its way across country. We arrived one evening at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and pitched our tent in the snow.
The next morning Robert, then twelve, and I decided to hike down into the canyon to the spring that watered it. We weren’t at all prepared for such a trek – no hiking boots, no water bottles. We came to the head of the trail and saw some sobering signs: loose rocks, danger of injury or dehydration – if our water ran out before we made it to the spring.
We decided to take our chances. We put some water into zip-lock bags and hoped our tennis shoes would navigate the rocks as carefully as the mules. The trail descended swiftly. Sometimes it was hardly a foot wide, with a steep canyon wall on the right and a sheer drop of thousands of feet on the left. Down, down, down we went, back into time, down into deep silence. No hum of motors...soon not even the sound of birds could be heard.
All of a sudden the sky opened up and huge balls of hail began pelting us on the head. Our instinct was to duck under something, but the only thing available was scrubby little bushes, about eight inches high. Soon we were laughing at our attempts to hide from the hail, and so we walked palms up, catching balls of ice here and there.
It began to dawn on me that there was something just right about the hail, some essential givenness. The hail belonged right where it was, falling from the sky onto whatever happened to be under it. The rocks too seemed perfect in their rockness, the little bushes in their scragliness, the lizards in their swiftness. It was as if God had plunked them down aeons ago and said to them, “You are very good.” They seemed to be singing, “What I do is me, for this I came.”
Suddenly I was aware of myself as human creature able to say what the rocks and hail and lizards seemed to want to say. And so I whispered up the wall of the canyon and towards the blue, blue sky, “Blessed be God!”
In that instant I saw something for the first time. I saw my own givenness in the universe, a givenness that could not be taken away. All inclination to envy others, to compete, to vie for a place in the world, melted away. It became crystal clear to me that everything that was, was good – all things, as Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, “fickle/freckled– who knows how?–with swift/slow, sweet/sour, a dazzle/dim”...all things male and female, black and white, Israeli and Palestinian, Iraqi and American, Hutu and Tutsi, gay, lesbian, straight, old and young – all things participate together in God’s good creation.
Wisdom plays in us all, awakening gladness for the creation, awakening compassion for ourselves and all creatures, and kindling the desire for justice. Once we know our own God-given place in the universe, we are moved to act so that everyone might share vita abundantior.
Jerusalem
In 1991 I saw this movement towards justice embodied in an unlikely place. I was at St. George’s College, Jerusalem just at the end of the Gulf War. St. George’s is an Anglican cathedral and place of study, located in a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The only Jews in the neighborhood were armed soldiers, and everywhere there was a feeling of bitterness and resentment that come from oppression.
One evening the Arab-speaking congregation of St. George’s hosted a concert for peace. Just as the British folksinger was beginning the concert, a tall man, wearing a kippa – a yarmulka – came through the doors of the cathedral and walked quietly to the front of the nave with two young children in tow and took a seat. My heart leapt into my throat. I knew the danger of his coming into this neighborhood at night, looking unmistakably like a Jew. I thought of his sons–-the risk he was taking in bringing them there!
As the singer began his closing song, called “The Chain of Love,” people began spontaneously to link hands and dance around the inner perimeter of the cathedral. I watched in tears as the rabbi took someone’s hand and with his children joined the circle. Was it not Wisdom who kept watch as the rabbi crossed the line from safety into a hostile neighborhood–-Wisdom, who teaches that we are one?
Even Unto Death
And was it not Wisdom, clothed in the garb of compassion, who stood on the threshold of the Amazon rain forest when Dorothy Stang entered the forest on her mission?
Dorothy Stang was a small, white-haired nun from Ohio. In 1966, she had begun working with farm worker communities in northeast Brazil. When those communities began migrating to the Amazon region to seek a better livelihood, she went with them. She helped them develop sustainable farming on the edge of the rainforest and did all in her power to protect the rainforest itself from the illegal exploitation of logging companies and ranchers.
Dorothy turned to the local government for help, but the officials proved to be more interested in money than in the welfare of the rainforest. She then formed an advocacy network back home, asking the sisters to write letters and visit legislators. On a trip home, Dorothy asked a group of state legislators if they knew what a sobbing monkey sounded like. She knew, because she had heard monkeys screaming as their habitats were being burned.
In February, Dorothy received word that some ranchers were threatening a community of peasant farmers in a little village called Boa Esperanca, deep in the Amazon. The ranchers were ready to burn their crops or homes in order to force them off the land, or even to kill them. She called her brother in the U.S. to say that she’d be going into a dangerous area and asked for his prayers. Early on the morning of February 12th of this year Dorothy set out with sandaled feet and backpack towards Boa Esperanca, “good hope.”
Dorothy took one of the two dirt roads to the village. Unbeknownst to her, hired gunmen had been stationed along each of the roads. Dorothy came upon two of the armed men. They stood in the middle of the road with a “no passing here” attitude. She took her area map out of her bag and began showing them – innocently or knowingly – that the land they were standing on belonged to the farmers of Boa Esperanca. Then she walked on.
The gunmen called out to her. She turned and saw their guns. From her small bag she pulled out her Bible, perhaps quoting a familiar line –“Blessed are the poor”– or perhaps saying, as she had many times before, that this Bible was her only weapon. One gunman shot her at close range and she fell to the earth. Then they shot her five more times.
All day long her body lay in the soft earth of the rainforest she had loved and protected. A few days later more than two thousand poor Brazilian farmers marched to the remote jungle town of Anopu for her funeral.
The Conference of religious sisters of Brazil published a statement concerning Dorothy. Of the six bullets fired, the document said, three were fatal – and symbolic: One bullet entered her head, one her heart, and one her womb, as if to try to stop her thoughts, her feelings, and her creativity. This one small seventy-three-year-old woman had become an “unwelcome disturber” to those who wished to maintain the established order at any cost.
The powers-that-be tried to stop Wisdom’s play in Sister Dorothy, but as the document concludes, “We believe that her struggle did not end with her death but continues on, alive and growing.”
Everyone has a Place
The mystery of Wisdom’s play in the world teaches us that everyone has a place in the dance, that my neighbor’s beauty does not diminish my own, and that vita abundantior is meant for all.
You don’t have to struggle to find Wisdom. As the scriptures say, “She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her....She will be found sitting at the gate” (Wis. 6:13-14). You have only to keep your eyes and ears and hearts open – and stay awake.
Benediction
Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us, so be swift to love and make haste to be kind. And may the God of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, the God of Jesus of Nazareth, the God of Wisdom, be with you and watch over your going out and your coming in, this day and forever. Amen.
From a college graduation address to an interfaith audience by the Rev. Julia Dorsey Loomis, an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Southern Virginia. She is interested in centering prayer, the pursuit of nonviolence, advocacy through Bread for the World, and works toward acheiving the Millennium Development Goals to cut global poverty in half by the year 2015. She lives in Portsmouth VA.