Word and Wisdom at Advent’s Threshold
What if the Light of Advent is measured by the garden it grows? Advent week 1
Word and Wisdom
John 1:1-3
1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2. The same was in the beginning with God.
3. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made.
The Word is Divine, spoken and unspoken, heard and received. Words constructed our world when they are trusted enough to shape how we see it. Too many are obsessed with the belief that they perceive reality. We do not. None of us do. The best we can do is shape our worldview with the most reliable words we can find.
We can only study what we can measure, so we name measurements and set the scale of the world to those gauges. As long as our appraisal is honest and the information we glean is true, we can get close to understanding the nature of the world.
Words are divine; they shape the world as we know it and create the reality we live in, but those words can be twisted and distorted so all we see are lies masquerading as truth.
All we have are words. We cannot understand the world without them. Whatever we don’t have the words for is beyond our ability to perceive or conceive. This doesn’t mean that something is real just because we name it, but nothing can be real to us if we don’t have the words to express it.
How to Measure The Light
John 1:4-5
4. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it.
But what is this light? Where does it shine from and what does it illuminate?
Light is the unspeakable word, yet a reality we experience from its presence and absence. We give it words that cannot reach it: love, compassion, truth, justice, wisdom...
This Light is not the power of the sun, but we feel its light in those precious rays. We feel love so deeply we’ve developed a whole language around it. Genres of books, movies, music, and art are dedicated to it. The problem is that we cannot measure it or any of these lights we feel. We cannot count the liters of justice or mete out the meters of truth.
We can have greater clarity about the things we can measure and review than about those things we cannot. The problem is without love, compassion, truth, justice, wisdom and the other lights, our lives lose meaning and purpose.
Meaning and purpose arise from the actions we take, which cause us to feel as though we matter to causes, communities, and people we long to be a part of. In the absence of these lights, shadows fill the gaps and grant belonging and focus as a substitute for meaning and purpose. It is a hollow substitute, like giving sugar water and alcohol to people who need basic nutrients to stay healthy. While it keeps people alive, it does nothing to heal or sustain them.
Moralism is a performative substitute for justice, and membership is a mere shadow of love and compassion, but in the absence of the good life, they fill the gaps but leak through requiring an endless striving for approval to keep filling the void.
The Divine Word heals and restores through bringing love, compassion, truth, justice, and wisdom. The question is: how do we find this word and this light if we cannot measure it?
While love, compassion, truth, justice, and wisdom cannot be measured directly, we can see and experience the results of their presence. The compassionate act of feeding the hungry restores their strength and enlivens their bodies. It spreads love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). Refusing compassion does none of these things. Neither does denying justice, truth, or wisdom.
Light feeds, warms, and illuminates. We recognize the light by the love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control it grows in those it shines upon. The moralist only hears one word in that list: self-control, and pretends it is a prerequisite for the others. These grow together. A person who experiences no love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, or gentleness cannot have self-control. They are the garden of life watered by the word and fed by the light. They grow together, nurturing and supporting one another. The health of this garden is how we measure the presence of the Word and Light.
This is why the light cannot be overcome by the darkness. The dark defeats itself and the light scares it away.
The Word and the Light have worked in the cosmos since the great flaring forth because they are fundamental to its development and flowering.
Tending The Garden of Wisdom
Proverbs 8:22-31
22. “Yahweh possessed me in the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old.
23. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before the earth existed.
24. When there were no depths, I was born, when there were no springs abounding with water.
25. Before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was born;
26. while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the beginning of the dust of the world.
27. When he established the heavens, I was there; when he set a circle on the surface of the deep,
28. when he established the clouds above, when the springs of the deep became strong,
29. when he gave to the sea its boundary, that the waters should not violate his commandment, when he marked out the foundations of the earth;
30. then I was the craftsman by his side. I was a delight day by day, always rejoicing before him,
31. rejoicing in his whole world. My delight was with the sons of men.
Wisdom rejoices in the cosmos and delights in people. Wisdom is the heart from which the Word and the Light flows. Through rejoicing, with rejoicing, by rejoicing, and in rejoicing, the wise craftsman co-creates the world, and we do too.
Our calling, our good news is that the world is created in awe, silence, creativity, justice, and celebration. Everything is reconciled in beauty so it can endure and persevere. When we learn to turn our face to the light and listen to the word, we shine like a city on a hill and speak the creative words into being.
When you feel love in your heart, it hurts. It struggles within you to break free. When you tell that person you love them, you open the cage and let the light and the word free. If the love is returned, life is sweeter for it. If it is not returned, the cosmos is enriched for the love you shared.
We experience many kinds of love: familial love, romantic love, erotic love, and compassion. We may sow romantic love and reap a closer friendship or a new sibling. While we might feel heartbreak at the moment, the liberation of the word and light relieves a burden from the soul and releases the heart from its prison.
We grow in love, requited and unrequited, finding joy at its eternal hearth fire. Joy is grace with gratitude built in. We find peace not just in being calm, but in recognizing and restoring the wholeness at the root of creation. Within the spaciousness of our hearts we learn patience, which is to endure without bitterness, setting our temper aside and sublimating its fire to feed this garden with light so we don’t burn it down. Kindness is not just sweet words and actions, it is repairing the breeches rather than wedging them open further. Through our integrity and generosity we cultivate goodness. Faithfulness is not found in a creed but in our reliability and steady dependability. As we learn to use our strength wisely so that we have a light touch which does not harm but only helps, gentleness grows within us. Self-control is holding our impulses in check so we don’t react rashly, but act wisely.
This is the garden Wisdom rejoices in and tends. If we are to be wise, we tend our own garden for the reparation of the world. In learning wisdom, continue to speak the Divine Word and shine that Holy Light into the cosmos.
Living God
John 1:9-13
9. The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world.
10. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world didn’t recognize him.
11. He came to his own, and those who were his own didn’t receive him.
12. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, to those who believe in his name:
13. who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
The Word and Light don’t always shine on fertile soil. This is why we need to prepare our hearts to receive the light and the word so it doesn’t reflect off us.
The first step is to walk the first path, the Path of Awe. When we open ourselves up to awe and wonder, we learn the hospitality of Earth, recognizing that God is in all things and all things are in God. The Divine is a verb, it is the being and doing that creates life and the world. We find God in the acts of hospitality and wisdom, not in the cold words on a page or demands of despotic leaders.
In the first century Galilee, the Roman empire crushed the ability for people to experience awe and replaced it with the fear of the empire. Fear closes us off to awe. When empire captured the Church, it replaced the awe of Christ’s Gospel with fear of hell and punishment.
Love Casts Out Fear
1 John 4:18
18. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment. He who fears is not made perfect in love.
The Word, the Light, originates love. Fear arises in the absence of light.
When we encounter the Word or glimpse the Light, it never comes from one direction. It rises in the awe and wonder that shake us awake. It whispers through the silence and the ache. It stirs our hands into making, mending, and imagining. It calls us to weave justice and delight into the fabric of our shared life. The Gospel, the true good news, is that each of us is born of this Light. Each of us carries the breath of the Word. We are not outsiders looking in. We are kin to the Sacred, born in blessing, invited to co-create the world with Love.
The Light shines through the life within us. The Word resonates through every field, every river, every beating heart. When we choose to tend the garden of our days with compassion, courage, and creativity, we enter the great work of restoration. We heal what has been fractured. We remember who we are. And in that remembering, the world begins to bloom again.
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