“Wisdom also frees us to hold our thoughts about God, life and the universe with an open hand rather than clenched fist.” (Peter Enns). This quote comes from a “controversial evangelical Biblical scholar”. Having read some of his work, I can see why he’s considered controversial but I find his style of writing – modern, funny and thought-provoking – appealing.

I suppose like many spiritual seekers, when I started on my journey, I was hoping to find a compendium of wisdom, a nice neat little instruction booklet on spiritual living. Frog always laughs when I read equipments’ instruction manuals and I always frown when Frog picks up said equipment and just starts fiddling with it.

So I opened up the available instruction manual I had to hand, which happened to be the Bible, but quickly became flummoxed and frustrated, like Enns, by the numerous paradoxes. The New Testament seemed a bit more what I was expecting so I put The Old Testament aside. Oh but I kind of like Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. Another paradox…

In a recent article, I wrote about the definition of spirituality and how it had taken two years of exploration to ask what spirituality actually meant. When we started the blog, our aim was sharing spiritual wisdom. I often tag posts with Divine Wisdom and here I am two years in wondering what wisdom actually is.

I have come to see the Bible as a collection of contemplations rather than one definitive volume. This is why we have the Eye for an Eye crowd and the Love Thy Neighbour crowd. If we were to take all spiritual blogs today and put them together, we’d end up with the same result. The Blog Bible. I realised that when I use the Divine Wisdom tag, it’s what I interpret as being reasonable to the Divine’s eyes. This is what can lead to divisions. My interpretation is better than yours. Regressing to the playground behaviour!

Interestingly enough, Enns has written two books on the meaning of Genesis and Exodus. Just as Emanuel Swedenborg did! Todays featured quote is from Swedenborg’s book Divine Love and Wisdom and is probably the closest of how I now consider wisdom (again, maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong). Wisdom, like spirituality, can be experiential, ineffable, evolving…In spiritual terms, wisdom and love seem to go hand in hand.

For regular readers who know my Wizard of Oz fascination , wisdom appears to be both the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. Brains and Heart. Open our hearts and minds and unite them.

Think with love in the mind and act with wisdom in the heart.

Or as Swedenborg so elegantly put it, “Divine love is a property of divine wisdom and divine wisdom is a property of divine love.”

PS for the synchronicity or angel number fans, I bolted awake at 02:02 this morning. Open your heart, mind and energy to others

(Photo credit: Ylanite on Pixabay)