Today we are drawing on some wisdom that was written over 700 years ago. Imagine your writings surviving for over 700 years. Not merely surviving, but becoming known more and more around the world, translated into new languages, spread by technologies that the author could never have dreamed of. I am speaking of Rumi, the Persian poet and Sufi master from the 1200’s, whose poetry remains some of the most popular in the world today.
Rumi was a mystic, a sage, and a writer whose ancient words continue to strike a chord. Just last week we opened the service singing his words, “Come, come, whoever you are.” He was wise, lyrical, and often playful. And he once asked this question in a poem:
“Why are you so enchanted with this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?”
A mine of gold lies within you.
Now, that gold could represent many things: knowledge, either gained through study or through hard work; experience; intuition; compassion. And it could represent wisdom.
Rumi went on to say:
“Open your eyes and come –
Return to the root of the root of your own soul.” (Rumi, “We Can See the Truth in Your Own Eyes,” in Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved.)
What these 700-year-old words offer us is a glimpse into how to achieve wisdom and wholeness. It is an invitation; to listen to the voice whispering quietly to us, the voice we can only hear when the noise of the world falls away and leaves us alone for a time. It is an invitation to explore, to dig deeply within ourselves, and to search our hearts and our souls for the wisdom that we already possess; a mine of gold.
The wisdom of our hearts is different from the wisdom of our minds, which so often is obtained from sources outside of ourselves. The wisdom of the mind is acquired through knowledge, through reading and study, through travel, through life experiences. And yet, perhaps all that knowledge, coming from so many different sources, will never turn into wisdom. It is never guaranteed. If we are not paying attention, if we are not absorbing the lessons we are offered, are not open to changing our ways and our beliefs as a result of what we learn, then wisdom will remain elusive, unavailable to us.
But the wisdom of the heart is different. It is not obtained from outside sources. And to explore this heart wisdom we begin by asking two questions: first, what is it, and second, where does this wisdom come from?
The wisdom of the heart is the mine of gold. It is your intuitive self, what some might call your soul. It is the voice telling you what the right thing to do is: what the Quakers call the ‘still, small voice.’ It is the voice urging you to try a new profession, or suddenly telling you that you need to reach out to someone you haven’t spoken to in a long while. Perhaps it calls on you to forgive. It defies logic, and it can’t be explained. How does it know what it knows? Rumi would say that it is the root of the root of the soul.
Where does intuition come from? Albert Einstein, who so perfectly exhibited a balance of wisdom of both the mind and the heart, had this to say:
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
The heart’s wisdom, then, is given, not earned. We don’t know the source. Our poem that Peter read earlier, “Wooden Boats,” used the word ‘gift’ as well – the ‘gift within ourselves, what we have known but have forgotten.’ (Judy Brown, Wooden Boats)
We don’t understand the source of the heart’s wisdom. The mind’s wisdom, which should serve the heart, is acquired through knowledge and experience, and is given more credence; more importance. We often struggle to trust our intuition, the still, small voice, and as Einstein wrote, rely much more heavily on facts and on information.
As an aside, here during Women’s History Month, I found myself thinking about the old phrase ‘women’s intuition.’ The label ‘women’s’ made me wonder if intuition, the heart’s wisdom, was discounted in our culture. Is it considered less valuable, less of an accomplishment, than knowledge and learning? I did a little research. I read that ‘women’s intuition’ might arise from a reliance on non-verbal communication, on being able to read facial expressions and pick up on nonverbal social cues. It was a term created by men to explain this mystery of how women knew things. Since throughout history women often were marginalized, not permitted an education, not given opportunities to speak, they would frequently be observers and listeners, absorbing information from facial expressions or tones of voice, or body language. They learned to intuit what was left unspoken. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201107/women-s-intuition-myth-or-reality
I thought a lot this week about who in contemporary life would be considered wise, and over and over I came back to the same answer. I would be hard put to think of a person more wise than the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the people of Tibet. The Dalai Lama’s spiritual journey began at the age of two, when through a fascinating and mystical process, he was discovered, living with his family on their remote farm, to be the incarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. At six, he began his monastic education, a combination of academic subjects and spiritual and philosophical topics. It was a rigorous education that concluded at the age of 23, an education intended to create wisdom of both the mind and of the heart. The Dalai Lama’s wisdom is both a gift, descending in some mysterious way upon an unsuspecting family and their two-year old son, and also the servant of the gift, in Einstein’s words – the tools offered to sustain and nurture the gift. And as I thought of the Dalai Lama this week, a famous quote of his kept running through my mind: he is reported to have said, “My true religion is kindness.”
“My true religion is kindness.” And this brings up my next question for us to consider now, the important question: can we achieve wisdom without being kind, without being compassionate?
The reading we shared about King Solomon raised that question. Solomon proved to be a talented problem-solver – “hey, I know how to resolve this issue – I’ll just threaten to kill the baby that two women are fighting over, and the true mother will reveal herself in an effort to save it.” Down through history we’ve been offered this story as an example of great wisdom. But was it compassionate? Was it kind? The answer, of course, is no. It was neither. The solution was what we would call today a technical fix. And so, can we truly believe that Solomon was a wise man?
No, King Solomon was not wise. But the Dalai Lama is, for he possesses compassion. Over the years, exiled from his native Tibet, the Dalai Lama has transcended cruelty, war, and occupation of his homeland to become a true leader of the world, one who unites rather than divides, one whose words are heard and respected by millions.
Every day in recent years, I have thought about wisdom and compassion, and have asked if this country possesses wisdom. Knowledge here in the United States abounds. We should be proud of all that we achieve, from space exploration to computer technology to medical breakthroughs. But that does not make us wise. We developed the atomic bomb, and nuclear power, but have struggled to manage them safely. Their creation did not grant us wisdom.
If we were wise, we would have more compassion for our people. We would atone for the harm of slavery and would fight racism. We wouldn’t put immigrants in cages, or deny them flu shots. We would make college more affordable so that young adults aren’t saddled with debt for years. We would offer health insurance to everyone. We would invest in schools to level the playing field in gaining an education. We would stop for-profit prisons, and mass incarceration.
I could go on and on, and I’m sure you have your own list of things this country could be doing in order to better care for our citizens and residents. We do so very little to ensure that everyone has a fair chance to flourish, to achieve their potential. We fail to see the humanity of those who do not look like the people in the center, or sound like them. And I ask you: Is that kind? Is that compassionate?
Of course it is not. And it isn’t wise either. How can we ever be wise if we deliberately hold some people back? We help neither them, nor ourselves by erecting barriers to their success.
The late priest and theologian Henri Nouwen had this to say about compassion: that it is a practice of becoming downwardly mobile. To be compassionate is to descend to serve the poor and the marginal ones. Our American society praises and rewards the upwardly mobile. Can we be compassionate? (Henri J. M. Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, New York: Crossroad Publishing, p. 121.)
The image of downward mobility reminded me of the teachings of all the mystics throughout history, urging us to go deeper within, to dig down within ourselves to reach the mine of gold, the root of the root of the soul. The direction toward compassion and toward wisdom is downward. It is the same path, downward through compassion to reach wisdom.
My friends, there is wisdom of the heart, the mine of gold, our intuitive natures, and wisdom of the head, of knowledge and facts. Too often we have allowed the wisdom of the head to hold the power.
Remember Einstein’s words: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
Today I hope you will remember the gift, and learn to listen to the soft voice of your intuition. May it open you to compassion, to caring about others, to committing to see what unites us rather than what divides us. May we be like the boat builder in the poem, whose hands know what to do, from a place of deep memory. In the words of the poem, may we also unconsciously remember that:
“The knowledge lies as much
Within his sure hands on the plane
As in his head;
It lies in love of wood and grain,
A rough hand resting on the satin
Of the finished deck.”
And we can ask ourselves this question, as the poet wrote:
“Is there within us each
Such artistry forgotten
In the cruder tasks
The world requires of us,
The faster modern work
That we have
Turned our life to do?”
May your intuition, your mine of gold guide you forward, and may you be able to hear it calling to you and offering you its wisdom.
Amen.
