| On Wisdom
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All poems: copyright by
Nicholas Gordon
Free scrapbook poems
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provided by the author. |
1. Wisdom is universal, rooted in human nature,
which has evolved over millennia. But it is not eternal because human nature,
although slow to change, is not eternal.
2. We ought, then, to consider wisdom as we do
mountains or the sea--changing, but on a scale so vast and slow that to us
it seems eternal.
3. Still, wisdom will change as human nature
changes. For what is wise for the fox is not necessarily wise for the hare,
nor is a human being who will never die except by accident likely to experience
death and time in quite the way we do.
4. But human nature is rooted in nature, and
nature in being, which is eternal. Thus within wisdom, as within us, is the
radiance of being itself, a mystery unchanging that we have been given the
grace to share, in common with amoeba, roses, and humans millions of eons
hence, if such there be: eternity within time, the eternal source of wisdom
everlasting, of which our wisdom is merely a breath of
wonder.
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