the folly of our wisdom

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Plato

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“Any fool can know.
The point is to understand.”

― Albert Einstein

DSCN0140
(a curtained window in The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

What saith the wise man of his knowledge?
Is he, pray tell, the master or keeper of his own immediate world…

What of the land and sea…
Do depths and heights belong to the wise and knowledgable amongst us?

What of the stars, the moon, the sun and the very planets?
Are these entities, such as ripened fruit ready for the plucking, merely waiting for the wise among us first to imagine then to eventually claim as their own?

DSCN0136
( The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

And what of the very universe itself, might it therefore belong to the wise and knowledgable as it simply sits waiting as it seems, at the yearning fingertips of the sages, in need of their dissections and explorations.

Then perhaps it it be the explorers among us who are the wise and knowledgable.

DSCN0139

Has knowledge and wisdom become man’s end unto himself?
Has it become his golden calf?
Or has man simply become god himself?
All knowing and all powerful.
As the Great Oz hidden behind his smoke and mirrors.

DSCN0133
( The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

And what of this wise man…?
Does his knowledge beget wisdom, or does his wisdom beget knowledge?

DSCN0134
( The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

And who do we say are the wise among us?

The mighty or the diminutive?
The powerful or the weak?
The wealthy or the poor?
The healthy or the sick?
The kind or the evil?
The educated or the illiterate?
The ruthless or the polite?

There rests a palpable silence hanging heavy throughout the great halls and houses of learning which grace the major cities of this planet.
Their ancient voices continue whispering across the pages of time..
Those wise and knowledgable men among us who are still studied, quoted, read, savored, reimagined and realigned.

DSCN0131
(Bust of Socrates stands among the many busts of those learned individuals lining the walls of the Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland / 2015)

DSCN0132
(Bust of Plato stands among the many busts of those learned individuals lining the walls in the Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland / 2015)

The very books, the lectures, the theories, the postulates, the queries, the discoveries, the equations, the abilities, the mastery of it all, pales in comparison to the Master Creator of all that was, all that is and all that will be…who by His very decree has given man the ability to think, to learn, to dream, to create and to dare to seek more than himself…

The perhaps it is indeed the wise man, the learned man, the knowledgeable man who realizes, who actually knows and absorbs this very simple truth.

DSCN0137
( The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
― Meister Eckhart

Let no man deceive himself If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise.
1 Corinthians 3:18

The Shadows of our Illusions

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
Herman Hesse

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
George Orwell

DSC02241
(a western setting sun reflected from one of the many skyscrapers on the Nashville skyline / Nashville, TN / Julie Cook / 2015)

DSC02245
(Nashville skyline at dusk / Nashville, TN / Julie Cook / 2015)

Man creates, builds and constructs.
Why?
Because he can.
Always bigger, always taller, always grander. . .
Why?
Because he wants to be bigger, taller and grander than the next guy. . .
Endlessly seeking that which is exquisite, beautiful and spectacular. . .
Why?
Because he looks to fulfill a longing. . .
For what is it that man so longs. . .?
Man longs to fill a void. . .
An emptiness of that which is greater than man himself. . .
A void of that which is Divine
Why is that?
Could it because man longs for that part within his being that is open, unfulfilled and yearning for something which he simply cannot recognize as greater than himself. . .
and so he makes, he creates, he builds, he looks, he longs. . .

The Great Disturbance of Our Illusion
The idea that there is something eternal and infinite makes our souls anxious in their mortality.
They want to reach beyond themselves to immortality;
they themselves want to be immortal but know not where to begin. . .
Out of this disquiet of the soul have come the mighty works of philosophy and art:
The systems of Plato and Hegel, the Adam of Michelangelo,
the quartets and symphonies of Beethoven, the Gothic cathedrals,
the paintings of Rembrandt, and the Faust and Prometheus of Goethe.
They were all overpowered by the idea of something eternal and immortal. . .
At the same time, the most grandiose and delicate of all human
attempts to strive for the eternal out of the heart’s anxiety and restlessness is religion. . .
Human beings have found the way to light, to joy, to eternity.
The human race could proudly point to the flourishing of its spirit,
were it not for one thing namely, that God is God and grace is grace (Romans 11:6).
Here comes the great disturbance of our illusions and our blessed culture, the disturbance that God himself causes and that is made graphic in the old myth of the tower of Babel. Our way to the eternal was interrupted, and with our philosophy and art, our morality and religion, we fall into the depths from which we came. For another way had penned up, the way of God to humanity.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928-1931
I Want to Live These Days with You

concentric centers

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.”
Thomas Merton

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Galileo Galilei

DSC00429
(images of an amazing sunflower / Julie Cook / 2015)

concentric
kənˈsentrik
adjective: of or denoting circles, arcs, or other shapes that share the same center, the larger often completely surrounding the smaller. Late Middle English: from Old French concentrique or medieval Latin concentric us, from con- ‘together’ + centrum ‘center.’

DSC00635

The sun sits in the middle of a solar system which sits in the middle of a galaxy. . .
While everything and everyone spins mindlessly around the center—that being the sun.
God. . .who sits at the center of the universe
God. . .who was before there was anything
God. . .by whose hand all things came in to being
God. . .who will be when all has come and gone
God. . .in whose breath we find life
God. . .who all living beings revolve around
God. . .who sits at the center of our very being
God. . .who sits at the center of it all. . .
Or
do you believe that this is all here merely by happenstance?
do you believe it all just fell in to place?
do you believe that you sit at the center of it all,
wielding your own power of what will or won’t be?
You who builds skyscrapers, roadways, planes and rockets?
You who charts the heavens, the seas, the entire planet?
You who makes medicine, who attempts to heal, to teach, to save?
You who makes guns, bombs, wars and takes lives.
You who kills, steals, rapes, murders, lies, cheats. . .
You who abuses drugs, alcohol, sex, money, people, animals

Who created the flower?
Did it just happen one day?
Did it evolve from something else?
How did it come to be perfectly and concentrically formed, fitting amazingly together petal by petal and seed by seed?
How does it “know” to follow the sun for its life giving rays?
Can you, did you, make this flower?
You can make a copy, “print” a 3D image, paint or draw a copy, take a picture but can you make, create, produce a flower?
The question remains. . .
Who sits at the center?
At the center of it all. . .
Is it man?
or
Is it God?

DSC00431

DSC00428