Recently a great teacher died. He was, directly and
indirectly, responsible for improving the lives of tens of thousands of people.
He is assured of a continuing presence in Wikipedia. Yet he was also tragically
unable to acknowledge the love and respect of his students and was hurtfully
dismissive of those who offered him constructive criticism. In short, with all
his virtues and contributions, he was a less-than-perfect human being. Just like the rest of us. The beginning of
wisdom is knowing, really knowing, that we are not God. Then acting
accordingly. Wisdom means not only knowing better, but doing better—being God-like as much of the time as we can. That is,
striving to be saints, not just sages. Living from our divinely directed true
selves, not our egos. How hard it is to be great yet humble! How difficult in
our knowledge-based society to realize that being smart, even worldly wise, is
not enough! True wisdom is doing good, living with compassion, and walking
humbly in the knowledge that God with
us is not that same as I am God. We
may be captains of our souls, but not the admiral of the fleet, let alone
Commander in Chief. As 2011 unfolds, may each of us be guided not just to know
better but to do better more and more of the time, and may the soul of the
teacher who recently left us be richly rewarded for all the good he did and
forgiven for his mistakes. Amen.
|
 |
|||||||||||
 
Categoriesall-too-human v. fully humancelebration education happiness inner learning magic maturity metaphor Mysticism nationalism oneness pragmatism right use of power the future the good life the new renaissance Travel Blog war and peace wealth wisdom wisdom' wise living' the good life' talking to kids |
|
 |
|||||||||
    |
|||||||||||
