How to practice...

Gaining Wisdom

“Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.”

Barbara Brown Taylor (An Altar in the World)

Barbara Brown Taylor has been called by Time Magazine, “The Priestess in the Wilderness.” She reclaims the feminine voice as an element critical to the survival of Christianity. She also lives in the wilderness, in the mountains of north Georgia. Taylor brings religion down to earth, and finds Spirit in everything common and ordinary.

More and more, I have come to believe that true holiness is found in the simplest of things. Awareness. One must engage the head with the heart, and the gut, and every other part of the body. It is time to walk away from pat answers, from tired repetitions, from beating the same old drum. We should move forward with our whole selves, aware and present in this moment. Almost nothing in the world encourages us to do that. It is a practice that we develop for ourselves.

Taylor says, “Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.” Being open, with eyes and ears and heart and mind—that is the key that opens the door to the sacred. Jesus used the word, “Ephatha,” when he opened the ears of a man who was deaf and could not speak. It means, “Be opened.” That's how wisdom is gained.

                                                     In the Spirit,

                                                           Jane