Wisdom

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="01ed4c00dduajq.png"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="95" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 46 WIDTH="91"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="46" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="91" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Wisdom</B></div> <div> <IMG SRC="02bc7500.png" border=0 width="199" height="336" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFCC" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="558" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#990000" BORDERCOLORDARK="#660066" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BGCOLOR=#339999 > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 28 WIDTH="546"><div> <A HREF="relationship.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Willing Transformation"><U>Willing Transformation</U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#660066" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="the_mind.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="States of Being"><U>States of Being</U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#660066" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><B>Wisdom</B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#660066" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Poverty"><U>Poverty</U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#660066" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="humility.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Humility"><U>Humility</U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#660066" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="peace.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Peace Statement"><U>Peace Statement</U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#660066" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="id91.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Right Relationship"><U>Right Relationship</U></A></div> </tD> </tR> <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 73 ><NOBR><div> <IMG SRC="0d14e490.png" border=0 width="78" height="73" ALIGN="LEFT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#660066" FACE="Tempus Sans ITC" ><B>The Fourth Order of Francis and Clare </B></FONT></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B> </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="home"><U><B>home</B></U></A><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#660066" FACE="Arial" ><B>  </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#660066" FACE="Tempus Sans ITC" ><B> </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#6633CC" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="id63.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dec 04"><U><B>site guide</B></U></A></FONT></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>In Service of Lady Wisdom</B></div> <bR> <div> <B><IMG SRC="0bc645d0.png" border=0 width="100" height="93" ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> Following the inspiration of Francis and Clare, Fourth Order companions devote themselves to the service of Wisdom through cultivation of a listening heart; openness to life, creation and experience; and willingness for it all.</div> <bR> <div> We cultivate wisdom with simplicity and humility, earthiness and humor. Daily we pray for the gift of wisdom; the eyes to see; the ears to hear; the heart to understand; the awareness and willingness to participate in the connectedness of all life and all beings.</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Mind</B></div> <bR> <div> The untamed mind is endless racing, anxious thing; one thought after another, creating heaven or hell. The contemplation of wisdom calms the beast simply because it is the proper use of the mind. The mind, though alert, can then rest in profound peace, free of the ego's fear and manipulations. Holy Wisdom is the seed of the divine shinning out and enlivening all creation, a relationship with all that is, so intimate we can truly say "Thou"; and know that Thou is greeting Thou. </div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Guidance</B></div> <div> Wisdom guides on many levels. Wisdom probes to the heart and meaning of life and death from the proverbs of the practical to the awe and ecstasy of all that is. Wisdom is also an approach to life. Wisdom greets us in our own living experience. Wisdom is true power and true healing, for to hear is to obey, to obey is to be responsible to the authority of our own experience and that of our ancestors.</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Importance of Awareness</B></div> <bR> <div> What is wisdom? How do we know her? What does it mean to seek wisdom? Our ancestors have given us guidance and points of reflection regarding wisdom. Awareness of the experience of these in our daily life; contemplation of these from the scriptures and sacred texts; meditation and expression of these in art and action; and prayer and self-reflection regarding these are the guiding practices of the Fourth Order.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Focused Intent</B></div> <div> It is important to say what wisdom is not. To know with the mind is scholarship. Wisdom is not scholarship. A scholar may, or may not be, a true seeker of wisdom. Let us not be like those whose knowledge and words are betrayed by their actions. Fourth Order companions do not study wisdom for mental accomplishment and knowledge. We study wisdom as a practice to enter the silence and the hum of the great universe.</div> <bR> <div> Although we may attain knowledge, that knowledge is only a shadow of an unspeakable unknowable love that is God. We say unspeakable because it is beyond words. We say unknowable because it is beyond mind. We say ineffable and are struck like a bell with awe.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>An Invitation to the Banquet</B></div> <div> Wisdom invites us to a table where we are both the food and the one who eats it.</div> <bR> <div> She is the way of relationship, of deep communication, creature with creature, heaven with earth, faith with knowledge. She speaks to us in sound and in silence, and in the acts of giving and receiving. She is the way of what is hidden yet right before the eyes.</div> <bR> <div> Wisdom invites us to dance with her as we move through ordinary time to sacred time and from sacred time to ordinary time. She invites us to experience both time and the timeless as we stand in the place of the blessed here and now. She invites us to pay attention and practice awareness.</div> <bR> <div> Each of the above sentences is an entry into the mystery of God's love. Wisdom's teachings are the foundation of Fourth Order practices. We meditate upon them, experience them, sink deeply into contemplation of them, and practice the awareness of the heart.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B> <TABLE BORDER="7" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="263" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#000099" BORDERCOLORDARK="#66334C" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BGCOLOR=#CC9999 > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 303 WIDTH="241"><div> Wisdom is the lover</div> <div> who becomes the beloved.</div> <div> She hides if you hide.</div> <div> She is the ripened fruit</div> <div> that comes in your season,</div> <div> the greenness that sprouts in the heart,</div> <div> the seed, the water, the darkness of your soil. She is the light that shines.</div> <div> Run from her,</div> <div> and she will greet you in your running.</div> <div> She is the foot that falls,</div> <div> and the hard ground that feels it.</div> <div> Live in fear, and she will be your terror.</div> <div> Deny your own name, and she will shout it</div> <div> all day long, for Wisdom speaks Truth,</div> <div> and shifts her shapes to greet us.</div> <div> She is the spider endlessly weaving,</div> <div> walking across your wall.</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <I>Holy Madness</I></div> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></B></div> <div> <B>Paradox and Unity</B></div> <div> Wisdom asks us to hold paradoxes, even the meaning of our own woundedness, in awe and wonder. Francis saw in the suffering Jesus, the son of God and experienced Holy Wisdom in the presence of Lady Poverty. Wisdom reveals herself in all things. She is the woven tapestry of the universe where each thread is vital to the whole.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Discernment</B></div> <div> We pray to discern what is folly and what is wise; to be free from to be free for, like Clare who as a young woman fled conventional wisdom to embrace the heart and meaning of life. We pray to be courageous like Clare, who in her old age, held up the bread of life before warriors of death and politics, and petty scribes with all their little rules. Godly folly.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Wildness and Freedom</B></div> <div> Wisdom is a passionate juicy lover, a song that is singing underneath everything, a dance that is dancing. She is spontaneous, life giving and co-creative. She breaks our conditioning and sometimes appears foolish, crazy, <I>heyoka</I>, "backwards" or "left handed". She will not be contained by one culture, one tribe, one boundary. She is free in a world of slaves.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>That the People Might Live</B></div> <div> Wisdom greets us in all generations and requires our voice and response. She asks us to relate with loving kindness to all beings, to act with awareness and speak "for all my relations", "that the people might live".</div> <bR> <div> She invites us to integrity, to uplift and speak for whatever lives and moves and has its being in her. We meditate on these words, experience them, sink into contemplation of them, become them, and practice the awareness of heart that we would be as Francis living in godly folly and joyous humility.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="wisdom_m.htm" TITLE="Wisdom"><U>Back to Top</U></A>     <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="home"><U>Home Page</U></A></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>