Getting It Together 1: Seeking Sophia
Yesterday I began a new sermon series entitled "Getting It Together: Charting a Path for Wisdom Amid Life's Traumas." The sermon below is the first sermon in that series.
Proverbs 1:1-6, 2:1-14:
For learning about wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young— let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.
My child, if you accept my words and treasure up my commandments within you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; if you indeed cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding; if you seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures— then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk blamelessly, guarding the paths of justice and preserving the way of his faithful ones. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; prudence will watch over you; and understanding will guard you. It will save you from the way of evil, from those who speak perversely, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil.
1. Watching Star Wars in college (My brother Brett watched it 11 times by the time he was interviewed for paper at age 13) First Star Wars episode released in 1977
a. George Lucas as influenced by Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces
b. Joseph Campbell interviewed by Bill Moyers on PBS for his series, “The Power of Myth.”
2. Hero’s journey
Joseph Campbell: the Hero of a thousand Faces: “The hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
3. Spiritual Journey to Wisdom is similar to the Hero’s Journey. It often consists of these elements:
4. The journey begins with a destination and a map of how to get there.
There is a bumper sticker that I see occasionally on cars that says “Not all who wander are lost.” Typically I’ve noticed that this bumper sticker is often on old VW vans or campers perched precariously on the bed of an old pickup. Certainly there is something to be said about an open-ended exploration of someplace one is visiting just to see what is there, but I’m not sure it works out so well as a life philosophy. Most journeys begin with a general sense of having a place to go: a goal, a destination, an end point that tells you that you have arrived.
The main goal and destination of the spiritual journey is wisdom. Now what do I mean by “wisdom?” One way to understand wisdom is that it represents a way to integrate the various pieces of your life into a way of life that is unified and intentional. It means no longer being lost in our wanderings, but being guided by our destination. It means arriving at home in our hearts.
5. Orientation and Re-orientation, Adventure and Wounding
What makes stories about hero journeys interesting to read is not the fact that they arrive at their destination, but what they encounter along the way, the challenges, obstacles and villains they face, and how they overcome them. Often times this entails a forced or perhaps an accidental deviation from the path, whether to slay a dragon, learn about The Force (as in the Star Wars movies), or to rescue someone in danger.
The reason I talk about wisdom as a process of integrating the various pieces of our lives is that we have all these adventures along the paths of our journeys. These adventures mark us and often wound us. Wisdom entails the ability to reflect upon the critical experiences, traumas, problems or difficulties we experience or encounter in life and then to find a way of carrying on in life that contributes to our well-being as well as the well-being of others.
6. Integration and insight
Gaining wisdom, however, is not an accidental process. It is intentional and guided. In order to integrate our life experiences in any helpful or meaningful way, we need to have a system of meaning that explains what is of ultimate value and worth in life, and a guide how to live according to those ultimate values. That is what the map does. We call this the Way of God, or the Way of Jesus. Our task in our spiritual journey is to fit the pieces of our stories into the bigger story of God, to fit all our individual paths onto the greater map that the Way of our faith describes and lays out for us.
The New Revised Standard Version of Proverbs 1:3 puts the purpose of gaining wisdom this way: “for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity.” What this means is that Wisdom does not exist to benefit the individual, but the whole world. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
7. Service to world
The final step of the hero’s journey is to return home with gift of self-knowledge and the boon of insight that they have acquired in order to offer it to their community. This is true of wisdom as well. We do not live unto ourselves alone. We are members one of another, as Paul says.
All of our individual journeys are like the many streams and trickles of water that fall down a mountainside following a rain, joining and merging into larger streams and rivers. The wisdom we each acquire is added to the great flow of life. Paul says to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. What this means is to take all that we have experienced and learned in life and use it as a means to wisdom under the guidance and transforming power of God, and then allow God to use that wisdom wherever it is needed in our communities and world. That is the ultimate destination: back where we began, at home in our hearts, in service to our world.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 is a perfect example of a national trauma that has shaped our lives in numerous ways, probably more than we are even aware of. We have been on a deeply troubling journey since that time, not unlike the journey our country traveled in the 1940s. But how has that journey shaped us? What have we learned from that experience, and how have our deepest values as a nation been affected by this experience? Have we become wiser, more compassionate, more just?
I would like to share with you the story of one person who decided to use his personal tragedy to benefit the world. (The following story was found online):
Pregnant Flight 93 victim honored by husband's lasting tribute, by Jeff Girion | Yahoo! 9/11 10th Anniversary Site – Thu, Aug 11, 2011
Found on the Internet 9-7-11: http://news.yahoo.com/pregnant-flight-93-victim-honored-by-husband-s-lasting-tribute.html
Sermon, September 11, 2011
Rev. Dr. Craig Strobel
Proverbs 1:2-7
Proverbs 1:1-6, 2:1-14:
For learning about wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young— let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.
My child, if you accept my words and treasure up my commandments within you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; if you indeed cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding; if you seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures— then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk blamelessly, guarding the paths of justice and preserving the way of his faithful ones. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; prudence will watch over you; and understanding will guard you. It will save you from the way of evil, from those who speak perversely, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil.
1. Watching Star Wars in college (My brother Brett watched it 11 times by the time he was interviewed for paper at age 13) First Star Wars episode released in 1977
a. George Lucas as influenced by Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces
b. Joseph Campbell interviewed by Bill Moyers on PBS for his series, “The Power of Myth.”
2. Hero’s journey
Joseph Campbell: the Hero of a thousand Faces: “The hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
3. Spiritual Journey to Wisdom is similar to the Hero’s Journey. It often consists of these elements:
- Destination and map
- On and off the path – orientation and re-orientation
- Adventure of the journey – trials and wounds, lessons learned, healing from wounds
- Integration and insight (boon)
- Service to world (return and application of the boon)
4. The journey begins with a destination and a map of how to get there.
There is a bumper sticker that I see occasionally on cars that says “Not all who wander are lost.” Typically I’ve noticed that this bumper sticker is often on old VW vans or campers perched precariously on the bed of an old pickup. Certainly there is something to be said about an open-ended exploration of someplace one is visiting just to see what is there, but I’m not sure it works out so well as a life philosophy. Most journeys begin with a general sense of having a place to go: a goal, a destination, an end point that tells you that you have arrived.
The main goal and destination of the spiritual journey is wisdom. Now what do I mean by “wisdom?” One way to understand wisdom is that it represents a way to integrate the various pieces of your life into a way of life that is unified and intentional. It means no longer being lost in our wanderings, but being guided by our destination. It means arriving at home in our hearts.
5. Orientation and Re-orientation, Adventure and Wounding
What makes stories about hero journeys interesting to read is not the fact that they arrive at their destination, but what they encounter along the way, the challenges, obstacles and villains they face, and how they overcome them. Often times this entails a forced or perhaps an accidental deviation from the path, whether to slay a dragon, learn about The Force (as in the Star Wars movies), or to rescue someone in danger.
The reason I talk about wisdom as a process of integrating the various pieces of our lives is that we have all these adventures along the paths of our journeys. These adventures mark us and often wound us. Wisdom entails the ability to reflect upon the critical experiences, traumas, problems or difficulties we experience or encounter in life and then to find a way of carrying on in life that contributes to our well-being as well as the well-being of others.
6. Integration and insight
Gaining wisdom, however, is not an accidental process. It is intentional and guided. In order to integrate our life experiences in any helpful or meaningful way, we need to have a system of meaning that explains what is of ultimate value and worth in life, and a guide how to live according to those ultimate values. That is what the map does. We call this the Way of God, or the Way of Jesus. Our task in our spiritual journey is to fit the pieces of our stories into the bigger story of God, to fit all our individual paths onto the greater map that the Way of our faith describes and lays out for us.
The New Revised Standard Version of Proverbs 1:3 puts the purpose of gaining wisdom this way: “for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity.” What this means is that Wisdom does not exist to benefit the individual, but the whole world. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
7. Service to world
The final step of the hero’s journey is to return home with gift of self-knowledge and the boon of insight that they have acquired in order to offer it to their community. This is true of wisdom as well. We do not live unto ourselves alone. We are members one of another, as Paul says.
All of our individual journeys are like the many streams and trickles of water that fall down a mountainside following a rain, joining and merging into larger streams and rivers. The wisdom we each acquire is added to the great flow of life. Paul says to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. What this means is to take all that we have experienced and learned in life and use it as a means to wisdom under the guidance and transforming power of God, and then allow God to use that wisdom wherever it is needed in our communities and world. That is the ultimate destination: back where we began, at home in our hearts, in service to our world.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 is a perfect example of a national trauma that has shaped our lives in numerous ways, probably more than we are even aware of. We have been on a deeply troubling journey since that time, not unlike the journey our country traveled in the 1940s. But how has that journey shaped us? What have we learned from that experience, and how have our deepest values as a nation been affected by this experience? Have we become wiser, more compassionate, more just?
I would like to share with you the story of one person who decided to use his personal tragedy to benefit the world. (The following story was found online):
Pregnant Flight 93 victim honored by husband's lasting tribute, by Jeff Girion | Yahoo! 9/11 10th Anniversary Site – Thu, Aug 11, 2011
Found on the Internet 9-7-11: http://news.yahoo.com/pregnant-flight-93-victim-honored-by-husband-s-lasting-tribute.html
Ten years after her death on Sept. 11, 2001, Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas still inspires people. That's not an accident. Her husband, Jack, insists that her legacy be a living one.Life buffets and us and tosses around, bruises and wounds us in many ways. How will we respond? Will we allow our traumas and terrors to shape and control our lives will we walk the way of wisdom, and work with God to heal our world? As always, the choice is ours.
Lauren -- along with 39 other passengers and the flight crew -- died when United Flight 93, having been hijacked by terrorists, went down in a field near Shanksville, Pa. It was the flight that fought back against the attackers, preventing the plane from reaching its target in Washington, D.C. The heroism of those passengers -- and their battle cry, "Let's Roll"-- lives on as part of the tragic story of 9/11.
For Jack, the sudden death of his wife carried additional grief. Lauren, 38, was pregnant, and Jack, suddenly without his family, was thrust into a world of pain and loneliness, engulfed by a dark depression. It was Lauren's spirit, in many ways, that gave him the strength he needed to fight his way out of it.
When Lauren turned 30, Jack remembers, she wanted to do something adventurous: skydiving. Jack says Lauren encouraged him to try it as well. And he did.
That was Lauren, celebrating through doing -- and inviting someone along for the ride. To honor her spirit, Jack and Lauren's family started the Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas Foundation, a philanthropic organization that helps people attain their life goals. One of the foundation's key acts is financially supporting a state-of-the-art birthing room at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, Calif.
For Jack, helping hundreds of babies come into the world transformed what had been a personal tragedy into something truly life affirming. Today, he proudly looks back at the families the foundation has helped start off on the right foot.
But he didn't stop there. Jack and Lauren's sisters decided to finish a book project Lauren had dreamed of completing. The book, "You Can Do It!: The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-Up Girls," was published in 2005 by Chronicle Books. It's targeted at women who want to learn new skills or try new things such as photography, scuba diving or training for a triathlon.
As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Jack understands the importance of remembering and memorializing the tragic events surrounding 9/11. For him, what stood out the most about Lauren was her way of rejecting passivity and taking hold of life.
Comments
Post a Comment