We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power, as no nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand...
If it [our framing story] tells us that the purpose of life is for individuals or nations to accumulate an abundance of possessions and to experience the maximum amount of pleasure during the maximum number of minutes of our short lives, then we will have little...
Wisdom is not merely knowing the right answers. It's about living rightly. from The Wisdom Pyramid
In every culture there are persons who fill the position of community elders. These are men and women whose wisdom, generosity of spirit, wide concern, and inclusive love equip them to care for people beyond their kith and kin. Their goal is not just the well-being of...
In essence, adaptive capacity is applied creativity. It is the ability to look at a problem or crisis and see an array of unconventional solutions. Adaptive capacity includes the quality Keats found essential to the genius of Shakespeare--negative capability. This...
Facts, as such, never settled anything. They are working tools only. It is the implications that can be drawn from facts that count, and to evaluate these requires wisdom and judgment that are unrelated to the computer approach to life.
Our Christian wisdom is to name the darkness as darkness, and the Light as light, and to learn how to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us. If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything-is-beautiful attitude, we are in fact going to be...
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.
Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting...
As Christians, we have much to learn from Simone Veil and from the many men and women well beyond the bounds of our Christian household who revere the wisdom and the way of Jesus. As Martin Buber (1868-1965), the great Jewish philosopher, said, "I do not believe in...