Responding With What Is Needed In Each Moment

I always love looking up the root of words to see what they mean. While we have the current usage of words, the roots sometimes reveal nuances that might guide us or shed some new light on things.

Our first reading today from Sirach 1 focuses on the word “wisdom” and extolls the virtues of God with respect to wisdom.  Wisdom is referred to as feminine, and we’re told in the reading that God “has poured her forth upon all God’s works.”

That last line just felt so powerful for me – that God’s wisdom has been poured forth into all God’s works.

I am often struck – when I take time to pause – about the wisdom in the world all around me.  As I am writing this, there’s a tiny bug that probably lives in our houseplants that has landed on my laptop and is drawn to the energy of the screen. This tiny creature has a wisdom, purpose and life poured into it by our creator.

Take a moment – even as you are reading this – to notice something from creation around you and appreciate the deep wisdom that this creature has about living.

What does this creature know about living? About reciprocity? About healing? About this place you are both in?

I have always loved and often reference the Native American idea of the “original instructions” given to everything by the Creator. Maple trees, sparrows, grasshoppers, fungi, butterflies and earthworms (to name but a few) all seem to follow their original instructions – that deep wisdom given to them by Creator in order to live in reciprocity with each other and the world around them.

Not so with humans. Many of us have veered far from our original instructions.

Which leads me to the definition of wisdom.

As you might guess, the word wisdom has roots in the idea of “making right decisions” and sometimes has connotations related to learning from mistakes in the past.  Older meanings, however, suggest that wisdom enables one to see or know with greater clarity. So it’s not just that we make the right decisions. We see or feel the way forward more clearly.

In the gospel today from Mark 9, Jesus and some of his crew are coming down from the mountain and encounter people who are arguing. In the crowd is a man whose son has violent seizures. The disciples had tried to cure the son but were unsuccessful. The boy’s father says to Jesus, “if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus seems a bit taken aback by this and says, “If I can do anything???” And he goes on to say, “Everything is possible to one who has faith.”

Ultimately Jesus prevails over the spirit and cures the boy. Later in private, the disciples wonder with Jesus why they were not able to cure the boy. And he responds, “This kind can only come out through prayer.”

Before I go any further, I do want to address  a line from the gospel that, I think, has been used against a lot of people over time. “Everything is possible to one who has faith.” I’ve most often heard it related to when an outcome we’d hoped for does not come to pass and we say internally or someone says externally, “well, if you had had more faith…”

Just to be clear. The disciples in this story had a lot of faith. And they prayed too, and did all the things that Jesus taught them to do. 

So why couldn’t they cure the boy?

I do not know. Just like I do not know why some prayers are answered and some prayers are not. But I am not sure it’s because we do not have enough “faith.”

What I take refuge in are Jesus’ last words to his disciples, “This kind can only come out through prayer.”

Recently I came across a passage that suggested that the purpose of spiritual practices – like prayer – is that they give us the skill of being able to respond with what is needed in the moment. 

My guess is that Jesus was very skilled in these practices and was able to call forth what was needed in a way that the disciples may not have been. But he also seems to suggest that this level of skill is available to us through practice (like prayer).

The practice of prayer – especially as I think Jesus means it – gives us the wisdom to discern the way forward in this moment. This kind of prayer helps us connect with what I imagine are the ‘original instructions’ given to us that help us tap into a powerful source of healing and insight.

As we approach the Lenten season, we are being invited into a time where we dive more deeply into spiritual practices that might enable us to respond more fully in each moment. Since wisdom has been poured into every living creature, we can learn from squirrels as well as blue jays, pine trees and house plants – just as we can learn from reading the gospels or taking quiet time.

This week, take some extra moments to slow down and notice the wisdom all around you. Take that wisdom in so that you might be able to respond with what is needed in each moment.