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The Wisdom Literature Rating: 8 on a scale of 10 Review Recently, a fellow I know was teaching a college course on wisdom. I asked him what book he was using and this was it. It sounded very interesting so I read it. In that strange fashion in which things connect together sort of mystically, it seems to fit with just where I am at Spiritually these days. For many years our culture has been involved in a gradual "unfolding" process of growing awareness. It began back in the 1960's in various forms. The form I am concerned about relates to the women's movement. There has been a growing awareness of the importance of the feminine in culture and society. I am not here to discuss the pro's and con's of where we are or where we are going exactly. Suffice it to say, "We have come a long way baby". When I consider the position of women when I was growing up compared to now, there has been remarkable progress. Still, we have a long way to go for the unfolding to be "complete". In my mind and heart this book represents an important feature of the unfolding. To put it simply, God has a feminine side, the feminine aspect of God is called Wisdom. This book is about Wisdom and its origin and relationship to the feminine character of God. Those who are careful readers of the Old Testament will have noticed some areas in scripture where Wisdom is referred to as "she". And, if you were very careful you will have noticed how this "she" bears a remarkable resemblance to Jesus in its character. In fact, I am rather confident people would identify certain verses in the Book of Proverbs as referring to Jesus. However, if you more paying attention you will remember that these verses were referring to a "she". This has always intrigued me. What this has to do with my Spirituality is really quite simple. I have reached a point in my life and awareness where I can now understand God as "she", the feminine aspect of God, the Wisdom of God, the living breathing Word of God. In our patriarchal male dominated culture we tend to miss this. I dare say many men would be quite unwilling to consider or "see" God in feminine form or quality. I have heard theIr comments, things like: "Well, if God presents Himself to us as a man, there must be a reason for it, so why would I consider God as a woman". These same men sort of gloss over the references in Proverbs as not important, not to mention that little part in the first few chapters of Genesis where humankind are made in the image of God, both male and female, implying of course that we are derived from God in two of God's aspects, masculine and feminine. My rather strong belief is that God can present to us in about any form God might choose. We have examples including the burning bush, a towering pillar of smoke and fire, and of course as Jesus. If God can be a bush then certainly God can choose about any form desired for a given need to communicate. It now seems clear to me that God, uses feminine form to symbolize Wisdom. This sounds a bit odd, but it is in perfect keeping with psychological typology. It is the introverted intuitive feeling perceiving form which is the most feminine of all the Myers-Briggs or Jungian psychological types. This type contains the deep intuitive qualities which we would expect Wisdom to most likely arise from. In the "cultural DNA" of who we are this kind of type is usually perceived as feminine. It makes some sense then that Wisdom would be symbolized as feminine. You may think this seems a bit odd, but it is not. In fact, it is remarkably ancient in its character. Let me explain. Today, I was reading an article in my Echocardiography journal. The article was referring to a "Delphi process" used to come to some conclusions about what were the appropriate reasons for doing an echocardiogram. I was puzzling over just what a "Delphi process" was through much of the article. There was a useful editorial at the end that clarified this for me, and gave me a nice refresher in some Greek mythology. You may remember there was an Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece. This seer was sitting over a crevasse in a rock with intoxicating gasses coming up from a python below. The seer would answer questions about the future. It turns out this seer was an unblemished woman. The Delphi process in science amounts to getting a group of people together in a room and compelling them to come up with similar such answers or opinions in a scientific fashion. Some might argue the process has not changed much in 2500 years. Even 2500 years ago we had questions about the future. And we answered those questions through a wisdom woman. This book is about the wisdom literature found in scripture. It is a wonderful journey through the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, The Book of Sirach, The Book of Wisdom or Ecclesiaticus, and others. Some are common to the protestant world while other books are from the Apocrypha and hence more familiar to the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox realms of Christianity. I found her insights remarkable and I felt like I learned a number of interesting new ideas. I especially liked her take on Job. I also very much liked the discussion about the 32nd chapter of the Book of Proverbs. It made much more sense to see this chapter as referring to Wisdom as the "virtuous woman" rather than laying this heavy burden on every woman as the way she should behave. It made sense to understand that this chapter was summarizing the whole Book of Proverbs in a profound way. I highly recommend this book. We need to move more in this direction of understanding and valuing the feminine side of God. In similar fashion we need to value the feminine qualities of both men and women who have been made in the image of God. I would like to take us from ancient Greece to the present. Recently, we elected Barack Obama as president of the United States. If you stop to consider the personality style of George Bush junior, you will see that he was a very masculine type. He followed the very feminine style of Bill Clinton (who by the way is married to a very masculine styled Hilary Clinton). After eight years of masculine testosterone to the max, the collective political will swung the pendulum in the opposite direction and now we have President Obama, an introverted intuitive feeling perceiving type, a male with the most feminine of all personality types. This is how we behave collectively, with a complete lack of knowledge that we are doing it. What are we seeking? At the moment, I would contend we are seeking wisdom. This is what we want from Barack Obama. We have gone to the deep well of a person of his psychological type to acquire the wisdom we need in leadership. Will we be successful, only time will tell. What does a young man need in life, wisdom. How does a man acquire wisdom, painfully most of the time. The words of the Wisdom Woman of Scripture is God speaking to us in feminine form. This Wisdom is both ancient and new every day. We are told to ask for it and to seek it. We are told to seek the feminine side of God. This is where Carl Jung found his concept of the anima, that symbolic representation of wisdom, the wisdom woman that connects each man to God, for indeed the woman is God. Similarly, the woman is connected to God by an animus, a masculine connection to God. We are all seeking knowledge of what to do in the future. Wisdom is the person and power for what to do today for tomorrow. Enjoy this book. All opinions are those of Curtis Climer, MD Copyright 2011
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