The Spirit’s witness to Wisdom

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Listening to the Spirit’s witness to wisdom, she reminds us: The Lord of glory was heard to say, ‘Why callest thou me good?  None is good save one, that is, God alone (Luke 18:19).  In a similar way, perhaps, the Lady of glory may be heard to say:  Why do you call me Great Lady, Lady Wisdom, Lady of the Temple, there is none good but one, the Spirit whose wisdom reveals the glory of the Name, ‘I AM,’ wisdom discerning the Spirit in the midst, RUACH BEKIRBENU!  The Spirit generously deconstructs all reifications of wisdom, saying: ‘ I am I AM, wise glory of grace in the midst; turn and see nothing here but fierce HESED, kindly love, revelatory grace, compassionate mercy, piercing light and golden clarity cutting through all talk of the Lady of the first Temple, leaping over notions of Lady Wisdom to her real presence, her radiant glory, her overwhelming beauty.’  Why do you call me the Great Lady?  Wisdom uncovers this older Sufi Shahadah witness at the heart of an even older martyred, Christian glory, humbly hidden in the midst of every genuine wisdom, including Orthodox Christian Hesychast tradition.  Listening to martyred wisdom, the Spirit in the midst, RUACH BEKIRBENU, is fiercely glorious in her spiritual witness, revealing God unveiled at centre in the midst.

Why do you call the Lady great, for nothing is great but her liberating presence which she reveals in her saving Name, her nourishing grace, her nurturing mercy, her wondrous love.   Cutting through all our reifications, she leaps straight over our reifying notions of the great Lady, just as the saving Name transcends but still includes the divine Lord.  The witness of wisdom is the Spirit’s unceasing awakening of the eye of the heart, severing  external obstruction, dispelling satanic confusion, dissolving diabolical division in the midst.  Nothing can separate the Spirit from God or wisdom from glory, here, where wisdom unveils the radiant presence of timeless glory.  Releasing the Lady of the Temple back into the texts that conceal her, the Spirit that reveals her shatters every fixation of her tortured history.  For she is revelatory presence, God with us, our Emmanuel, humbly waiting at the gates of every perception.  She cleanses perception of divisive confusion and cures awareness of dissipating division, opening heaven to a hallowed earth, transfiguring visible creation with invisible glory.

The Lady smiles to hear the old names and symbols spoken of again, after so many centuries exiled among shadows.  She smiles that we still think we had forgotten her, when in fact she was always present, hidden at the heart of every thought and every perception.  Good scholarship knows that so much nonsense passes for learned scholarship in an age that is confused by nihilism.  Wisdom listens but does not mock our confusion, because she is kind and loving with her liberating clarity.  Talk of the Great Lady holds open doors that have been long closed, so is certainly not to be treated with disdain, even though to wisdom herself, all this, to say the least, is unsatisfactory, because wisdom was, for wisdom, never hidden, never driven into exile, being always ever-aware and ever-present without ceasing in the midst.  With a flash of uncreated lightening, her presence is revealed in the glory she discerns.  There never was a law that superseded this eternal gospel, a reform that drove wisdom into exile, a restoration of what was never lost, because wisdom knows things as they actually are and she always knew that they were then as they shall always be, now.  Listening to wisdom is revelation indeed!  Listening to wisdom is glorious indeed!  We come, like a child, to listen to wisdom in the temple, only to discover she is present wherever we turn, that nowhere is her voice silenced but that although hearts do harden, becoming unable to hear or see, the Spirit gloriously hears and sees unceasingly, generously sharing with us her liberating wisdom.