Wisdom Path

This week Quanita Roberson and I will begin another 4-week wisdom series. There are two groups of 12-13 people participating. The overarching theme is Forgiveness. The weekly themes are respectively, Anger, Grief, Compassion, and Grace.

This week I find myself stirring with the series and with the themes, particularly that of anger. It’s always a good sign when I feel some preoccupation with the themes. The series is not primarily delivering content. I think of it as living the content. A commitment to notice and to nuance what shows itself in inner world germination that might be brought to outer world awareness and practice.

It occurs to me that one kind of wisdom is situational. When the world was seen as flat, it was wise to respect the edge. However, when the world began to be seen as round, the wisdom of respecting the edge grew to something different.

It also occurs to me that another kind of wisdom is perpetual. It matters across changing circumstances. No matter what the shape of the world, for example, it is wise to encounter the edges with some level of community and mutual support.

So my brain and heart are tuning to this upcoming theme. I’m eager for the wisdom of paying attention to what has energy and grip in our respective attentive fields. I’m eager again for the clues that anger provides for something (a situation, a memory, a resistance) that wants healing. I’m eager for the wisdom of leaning in together to encounter that which is so often held in isolation.

One of the exercises that I suspect we will do again this time is centered in a simple prompt. What is your “old” story with anger? What do you want to embrace as your “new” story with anger? I suppose the wisdom in that includes, that attentiveness matters (particularly to an intuition), and that choice exists (particularly with support of community) that can evolve who we are individually and together, from the inside out.

So…, yes…, in wondering. And in welcoming the theme to live me. What I know from such wondering is that alchemy is possible. And that how we go about living even the smallest bits on a wisdom path, this time with centered purpose of forgiveness, seems to create a noticeable vibration of wellness, whatever the shape of the world.

Here we go.