Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Wisdom is...

by Susan Weinberg

"Where do we find wisdom?" asked the Rabbi..."the head, the heart, the hands and in relationship", he replied. 












Tonight we gathered to thank our wonderful guides into wisdom, to share food and company and the meaning of our wisdom piece with the rest of the lab.  The final lab is always one of the most interesting labs, but also one of the most difficult to capture in words.  And no, I am not going to report on the comments of twenty-four individual artists.  You just had to be there.



What I share is a distillation of wisdom  from the perspective of the collective lab.  As I listened to each artist speak, I heard themes emerge, ideas that seemed to weave throughout using many voices.  Here's what they said.  

We have keys to wisdom, pearls of wisdom and words of wisdom.  

Wisdom is in the voices of our people and carried forward through books. It is in art and color and line. It is in poetry and in the process, starting somewhere and arriving somewhere, sometimes unexpected.  Wisdom is layered, veiled.  We find it in unlikely juxtapositions grafted together, forming synergies.  It is reflected, but only found upon searching.  We feel it in our bones and in our blood memory.  We find it in doing things, getting things done.   Wisdom is discovered in experimentation, in letting go, going out and coming in.

Wisdom is ephemeral, hard to grasp, sometimes passed on and sometimes lost.

Animals are metaphors for wisdom, owls and donkeys and snakes shedding skins.  Apples signify wisdom, their growth a maturation into wisdom.  

Wisdom is a gift, made of seeds, patterns, connections, cyclicality, a collection of things, a balance between heart and mind.  It is constantly changing, evolving, renewing.

People can signify wisdom, influencing others, modeling wisdom.  Those of us who witness wisdom honor it and those who carry it.

Wisdom resides in relationship and in nature.  

It is in the spectrum of color, hiding even within the word itself.  Wisdom is the search, the process.   

Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but a lifelong attempt to acquire it.

2 comments:

  1. I wish I could be with you! Hugs from Israel

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  2. You were in spirit when Robyn talked about the piece you worked on together. We were delighted to have you play a part in the exhibit.

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