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True wisdom allows for amazement
[Western Catholic Reporter - May 26, 1997]
 Re: "Amazement is the opposite of wisdom" by Father Ron Rolheiser (WCR, May 12).

To the Editor: The latest scholarship on the wisdom literature emphasizes above all else "the many faces of wisdom." If pondering and helplessness and keeping silent are the central dwelling place where Lady Wisdom resides, then we should also know that "vanity of vanities, all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2) is the foundation stone from where she speaks her "many voices."

    When God answered Job with many questions, he was not struck into silence by the Lord's awesome face and powerful majesty. Rather, he was amazed at the sheer size and wondrous complexity of creation. Next to all that, his own personal pains and concerns dwindled into vanity.  If amazement sometimes turns to hatred in many, this only shows the hardness of their hearts that cannot tolerate a love that is always amazed at the fickle and deceitful.

    One of the many faces of wisdom that all Christians should know and love is the poet-artist William Blake. One way to describe this strange little man is that he spent his entire life being totally amazed at everything he ever saw; seeing even an entire world in a grain of sand.

    The many faces of wisdom embrace all truth (even the Buddha's four noble truths and eightfold path), but the one thing she cannot accept is the idea that the mature Christian must never be amazed at anything in this awesome, infinite, glorious cosmos!

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 "Inauthenticity is to feel futile, contingent, without
purpose. Authenticity is to be driven by a deep sense of
purpose. Such a sense of purpose cannot exist unless we
first make the assumption that our sense of contingency
is a liar, and that there is a standard of values external
to everyday human consciousness." -- from 'Introduction
to the New Existentialism' by Colin Wilson, p.153
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 "A man [or woman] can only become an authentic personality
if he focuses attention wholly on the matter at hand; if he
intends to become such a personality in any other way, no
matter how hard he tries, he will rotate around himself and
become empty." -- from 'The Great Philosophers', Vol.4, by
Karl Jaspers, p.330
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"Now, then, clear out all the thoughts that take up your
 attention, and pack away all the old ways of looking at
 things that keep deceiving you" (Letter to Diognetus, 1:2).
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