Transcript Wisdom PedagogyWISDOM CAPABILITY

Wisdom
Capability
Tony Brennan and
Dr Drasko Dizdar, TCEO
• explorations in awe and wonder, reverence
• expansions- courage, knowledge and understanding
• implications for teaching with discernment and wisdom
WISDOM PEDAGOGY
WISDOM CAPABILITY
Awesome
Literature
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
THE WORLD is charged with the
grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from
shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze
of oil Crushed.
- Gerald Manley Hopkins
Awesome
Maths
In mathematics, the Fibonacci
numbers or Fibonacci series or
Fibonacci sequence are the
numbers in the following
integer sequence:
0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34, ….
A model for the pattern of
florets in the head of a
sunflower was proposed by H.
Vogel in 1979.
Awesome Science
Gerald Schroeder, Jewish Scientist, formerly with
MIT, now with Weizmann Institute in Israel (in
Compass Vol. 47. Winter 2013, p 23)
“The discoveries of science, those that
explore the molecular complexity of
biology, and those who probe the brain/
mind interface, have moved us to the
brink of a startling realization: all
existence is the expression of an all
encompassing wisdom that pervades
the universe. Every particle, every
being, from atom to human, appears to
have within it a level of information, of
conscious wisdom. The information just
appears as given, with no causal agent
evident, as if it were an intrinsic facet of
nature.”
Crab Nebula
Introducing
•
Awe
•
Reverence
•
Courage
•
Knowledge
•
Understanding
•
Discernment
•
Wisdom
A reading from the book of Proverbs (8:22-31)
Wisdom was born before the earth was made.
The Wisdom of God cries aloud:
The Lord created me when his purpose first
unfolded,
before the oldest of his works.
From everlasting I was firmly set,
from the beginning, before earth came into being.
The deep was not, when I was born,
there were no springs to gush with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
before the hills, I came to birth;
before he made the earth, the countryside,
or the first grains of the world's dust.
When he fixed the heavens firm, I was there,
when he drew a ring on the surface of the deep,
when he thickened the clouds above,
when he fixed fast the springs of the deep,
when he assigned the sea its boundaries
– and the waters will not invade the shore –
when he laid down the foundations of the earth,
I was by his side, a master craftsman,
delighting him day after day,
ever at play in his presence,
at play everywhere in his world,
delighting to be with the sons of men.
Good
Beauty
Truth
Wisdom is integral to a life that is true, good and beautiful. It is
the seventh and culminating gift of the Holy Spirit, the
Paraclete, the advocate and helper, the feminine divine.
The Holy Spirit
God in God-Self
is pure mystery,
made known to
us in our terms
but not on our
terms.
The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit- awe, reverence,
courage, knowledge, understanding, discernmentthat grow into an abundance- wisdom
Spirited Snapshots
St Peter’s Basilica, Rome
A neglected theology in western Christianity
AWE AND
WONDER
REVERENCE
COURAGE
UNDERSTANDING
KNOWLEDGE
DISCERNMENT
Isaiah 11:2-3
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him- the Spirit of wisdom and of
understanding, the Spirit of counsel
and of power, the Spirit of knowledge
and of the fear of the LORD-- And his
delight shall be in the fear (awe) of the
LORD. He shall not judge by what his
eyes see, or decide by what his ears
hear; (called discernment).” Isaiah
11:2-3:
St Paul 1 Cor 12
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the
same Spirit; and there are varieties of
services, but the same Lord; and there
are varieties of activities, but it is the
same God who activates all of them in
everyone. To each is given the
manifestation of the Spirit for the
common good. To one is given through
the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and
to another the utterance of knowledge
according to the same Spirit, to another
faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts
of healing by the one Spirit, to another
the working of miracles, to another
prophecy, to another the discernment
of spirits, to another various kinds of
tongues, to another the interpretation
of tongues. All these are activated by
one and the same Spirit, who allots to
each one individually just as the Spirit
chooses.
A Wisdom Spirituality
Three journeys of the spiritual
life:
• In the journey to seek the
True Self, one departs from
loneliness and seeks solace.
• In the journey to seek true
relationship with others, one
departs from hostility and
seeks hospitality.
• In the journey to seek the
True God, one departs from
illusions and seeks presence
and prayer.
Source: Henri Nouwen
A Sapiential Method and Process
Sapiential
Cardijn
Kant and
Lonergan
Awe and wonder
See
Be attentive
Reverence
See
Courage
See
Knowledge
Judge
Be intelligent
Understanding
Judge
Be reasonable
Discernment
See- Judge- Act
Wisdom
Act: do and be
Be responsible
We need- active contemplatives, young and old
- Those who live wisely in their doing and their being
• Young dreamers who dream of who they can be ((seeking the truth about self)
• Mature Prophets who stand for victims (seeking the truth about others)
• Elders, who call us to let go of our illusions ((seeking the truth about God)
A wise pedagogy integrates …
Four intelligences and a learning
dynamic in every lesson
SQ
Be attentive
Spiritual
IQ
Be intelligent
Cognitive
EQ
Emotional
PQ
Physical
Be
reasonable
Be
responsible
Human
L-Words
Kant &
Lonergan
Intelligence
Symbols
The whole learner
Wisdom to Shame the Wise
Seiger Koder, Holocaust
Rohr’s Reverse Theology
1 Cor 21-25: For since, in the wisdom of God,
the world did not know God through
wisdom, God decided, through the
foolishness of our proclamation, to save
those who believe. For Jews demand signs
and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim
Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews
and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who
are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For God's foolishness is wiser than human
wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger
than human strength.
God’s Wisdom is not this world’s
wisdom, but something much more
subversive of the way we do the world,
and society and religion and the way
we work out who we are and how
we’re meant to live.
Wisdom Shift to Shame the ‘wise’
Standard Worldview
Sapiential Worldview
A self-contained, closed and self-fulfilling view.
Nothing is complete in itself – an open system.
Defensive structures and top-down leadership.
Flexible structures & empowering leadership.
Operates on the law of cause and effect.
Observes more complex interdependence.
Matter is dead and inert-ordered.
The universe is alive and chaotically ordered.
Metaphor is the controllable machine.
Metaphor is the biosphere (holon/ whole).
Hostile view of strangers, outsiders.
Seeks new interaction. Inclusive.
Nothing really changes. Business as usual.
Change is real/essential. Change is life.
Creation by God is a literal past event.
God continually co-creates and begets life.
Life is getting more chaotic; devolving.
Out of chaos, evolves new creation, order.
‘Divide and conquer’.
‘Live and let live’. Non-violence, sides with victim
Take correct safe paths.
Explore new risky paths.
‘Show no emotion’.
‘Trust and share feelings’.
Worries the world might change the Church.
Welcomes the world as arena for the Church.
Scarcity
Abundance
The Fruits of the Spirit
18 For
the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but
to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of
this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the
wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided,
through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22 For
Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim Christ
crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those
who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the
wisdom of God. 25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s
weakness is stronger than human strength.
26 Consider your own call, brothers and sisters:[g] not many of you were wise by
human standards,[h] not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what
is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised
in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, 29 so that
no one[i] might boast in the presence of God. 30 He is the source of your life in
Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption, 31 in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who
boasts, boast in[j] the Lord.”
Christ the Power
and Wisdom of God
1 Corinthians 1: 18-31
The Fruits of the Spirit
The Wisdom of
Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton wrote:
From moment to moment, I remember with
surprise, that I am satisfied even though everything
is not yet fulfilled. I lack nothing. Ominino replete
me: he (God) fills me totally. Sapientia (wisdom) is
sapor boni (savouring the good) … to know and taste
the secret good that is present.
– A Search for Solitude
Thomas Merton prayer:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I
think that I am following your will does not
mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does
indeed please you. I pray that I will never do
anything apart from that desire. Amen.
Recommended Reading
• James Alison (1998) Knowing Jesus, Templegate: London
• Joan Chittester (2012) Following the Path: The Search for a
Life of Passion, Purpose, and Joy, Random House: New York
• Thomas Merton (2007) New Seeds of Contemplation, New
Directions: USA
• Thomas Merton (1996) A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the
Monk's True LifeThe Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3:
1952-1960, HarperCollins: New York
• Henri Nouwen (1975) Reaching Out: The three movements
of the spiritual life, Doubleday , New York
• Richard Rohr (2011) Falling Upwards, a spirituality for the
two halves of life, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco