Discovering Wisdom

How are you discovering wisdom?

This is a dark time and we need help and guidance daily. Words help me grow – God’s word. Words from others – both written and spoken and more experienced, more articulate, more, yah, just more. Here are some collections of quotes about wisdom I shared a few years back.

More stretches me. More enlightens me. More – the great More – reminds me God is always more – more than I imagine and more mighty that any evil on earth.

Here are some recent earthly wisdoms – that have expanded my mind, enlarged my heart and stretched my imagination.  Enjoy exploring and discovering wisdom with me.

“That at any given moment, we have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.Maybe, just maybe, we need to embrace that gift today.”  Terry Hershey.  I love his daily dose of insight and inspiration.  Here is the link to his Sabbath Moment readings. He is quite the storyteller and brings not only wisdom but encouragement and delight to my heart.

I find peace and wisdom in the daily reading shared on the app: Pray as you God. And their British accents are inviting too! https://pray-as-you-go.org/

“I know that the fact that I am always searching for God, always struggling to discover the fullness of Love, always yearning for the complete truth, tells me that I have already been given a taste of God, of Love, and of Truth. I can only look for something that I have, to some degree, already found. How can I search for beauty and truth unless that beauty and truth are already known to me in the depth of my heart? It seems that all of us human beings have deep inner memories of the paradise that we have lost. Maybe the word innocence is better than the word paradise. We were innocent before we started feeling guilty; we were in the light before we entered into the darkness; we were at home before we started to search for a home. Deep in the recesses of our minds and hearts there lies hidden the treasure we seek. We know its preciousness, and we know that it holds the gift we most desire: a life stronger than death.”  Henri Nouwen.  Any reader of this blog for long know I love Henri Nouwen and often am discovering wisdom in his words. I have been filled this year with daily quotes from my spiritual friend.

“Why We Have Our Best Ideas in the Shower: The Science of Creativity”  – what a fascinating article and gave me more wisdom into creativity – a topic high on my list to study in 2020. This also validates my long showers – it’s thinking time, right?

Elizabeth Cottrell shares a monthly newsletter full of wisdom. From her August newsletter: “I’ve been thinking a great deal about what’s really important lately…what’s essential…what’s essential to me. There’s nothing quite like a deadly pandemic to push you smack dab up against an awareness of your mortality and force you to rethink everything you were doing BEFORE and become very intentional about what you want to do NOW and AFTER. This should not be a morbid exercise. In fact, the Stoic principle of Memento Mori (“Remember that you will die”) is not intended to instill dread but, rather, to instill joy and energy into life by focusing on what’s important.” I always find encouragement and often a treasure within her words. Here her link: https://www.heartspoken.com/newsletters/

Maria Popova shared this poem by Davie Whyte called Sometimes that lingered in my heart. Her weekly email – Brian Pickings – overflows with the wisdom and beauty of more.  

SOMETIMES 
by David Whyte

Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.

Richard Rohr’s daily wisdom challenges me and to be honest sometimes goes right over my head. Yet just when I think I don’t get him, along comes a weekly theme or one particular insight that sets my spirit to soar.  Here is one that did that titled Change is Inevitable.  

And I would be amiss not to mention podcasts that fill my soul help me in discovering wisdom:

Love love love Emily P Freeman wisdom in the Next Right Thing

Listening to Brene Brown too: Love her honest exploration of emotions and life IN Unlocking Us. Here is her recent podcast that I saved to relisten to.  https://brenebrown.com/podcast/on-my-mind-rbg-surge-capacity-and-play-as-an-energy-source/    And by the way she refers to this amazing article called Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful by Tara Haelle that really explains a lot what is happening to us right now.

Wow! Can you tell I have been having fun and getting renewed exploring these past few months?  God often appears in the words and wisdom of others when we listen quietly to him for direction. 

What have you read/listened to lately that fills you with wisdom?