Spirit Matters: Wisdom brings order out of chaos

For most of my adult life, I have been on a quest for wisdom with a capital W.

A quiet voice deep inside of me has impelled me along this path and has only gotten stronger and more urgent with time.

It began with me discovering an exquisitely breathtaking passage in Wisdom of Solomon 7:22-30, which describes the “nature and incomparable dignity of wisdom.” This book is included in the Catholic Bible and is in the Apocrypha of the Protestant Bible.

Due to its length, I will leave it up to you to seek out the passage and reflect on it. It is well worth your time.

To seek wisdom is to seek the way of divine intelligence rather than the fleeting ways of the world and its chaotic, fallible systems. You could call it countercultural, as it requires you to live and speak for a way of being that is often unpopular. You will sometimes find yourself not only feeling alone and misunderstood, but standing alone.

You learn to be OK with that because it is a path more precious than jewels, and certainly more precious than winning a popularity contest.

Most recently, I have begun formation to be an associate of wisdom with the U.S. delegation of the Daughters of Wisdom, an order founded by St. Louis Marie de Montfort and blessed Marie Louise Trichet. The order’s charism is divine wisdom and to not only be seekers of wisdom, but to go into the world and share divine wisdom within your life’s framework.

Rather than an “associate,” I think of it as being an ambassador of wisdom, just as Saint Paul reminds us we are to be ambassadors for Christ, for Christ is the incarnation of divine wisdom.

In Proverbs 8:22-31, wisdom speaks:

“The Lord begot me, the beginning of his works,

the forerunner of his deeds of long ago;

From of old I was formed,

at the first, before the earth.

When there were no deeps I was brought forth,

when there were no fountains or springs of water;

Before the mountains were settled into place,

before the hills, I was brought forth;

When the earth and the fields were not yet made,

nor the first clods of the world.

When he established the heavens, there was I,

when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;

When he made firm the skies above,

when he fixed fast the springs of the deep;

When he set for the sea its limit,

so that the waters should not transgress his command;

When he fixed the foundations of earth,

then was I beside him as artisan;

I was his delight day by day,

playing before him all the while,

Playing over the whole of his earth,

having my delight with human beings.”

In fact, wisdom is depicted in “The Creation” mural on the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. As God the father gives life to Adam with the finger on his right hand, his left arm encompasses Lady Wisdom.

Indeed, in Genesis 1-2, God brings order out of chaos when he creates light, darkness, water, earth, animals of land and sea, birds, vegetation and humans. And wisdom was there for all of it.

Just as God’s wisdom brought order out of chaos in the story of creation, wisdom can and will bring order out of whatever chaos we find ourselves in, either personally or collectively.

Earthly structures and systems might think they are indestructible (tell that to those who built the Titanic), but if they don’t think and act out of a love for divine wisdom, they are destined to fail.

In this chaotic time we find ourselves in, I encourage you to seek divine wisdom – the eternal, indestructible kind – and to live according to her ways.

If she can bring order out of a vast, complicated, ever-expanding universe, she can bring order into our lives and into the systems that seek to destroy life.

She will prevail.

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.