Good morning, digital neighbors! As we move through autumn, we come to a week of quotes and musings about wisdom. If you don’t have an interior life—some capacity for reflection, questions, curiosity, and wonder—I doubt you will ever arrive at the shores of wisdom. One needs experience to be wise, although the very young can utter profoundly wise sayings and the very old and accomplished can completely miss wisdom. I wish wisdom came with age, but I’m not so sure of that anymore. When I see old 1960s hippies still trying to recapture the magic of the ’60s, not realizing they come across not as relatable but as antiquated and somewhat ridiculous, I’m pretty certain wisdom walked right on by.

I’m reluctant to call too many people wise, but I know wisdom when I hear it. So few of our conversations contain wisdom. As moderns, we mainly just bitch and gossip. We bitch about everything we dislike in culture, politics, or life, and we gossip about the more personal events in our lives. I don’t excuse myself from these two constant temptations, but they are both tiresome and exhausting when they become the mainstay of conversation. God knows—and He does—I’ve done a fair amount of bitching in these morning missives. Thankfully, gossip doesn’t interest me much. I try to balance these musings with more gratitude and reflection than just harping on and on about the Cabal.

How about a prayer and a couple of quotes for those of us in recovery from bitchyitis or suffering from chronic gossipation? Happy Monday, friends!

O God, it is easy to love the whole world,
but hard to love the person one works next to;

O God, it is easy to campaign for world peace,
but hard to contribute to the peace within my own home;

O God, it is easy to be fascinated with some new truth,
and miss you in the thing I have known so long;

O God, it is easy to share my home and possessions with people I like.
Teach me how to be generous toward others.

Enable me today to say something or do something
that will make a difference to the discouraged,
to the inexperienced,
to the despairing.

Let no selfish concern with my own affairs
shut me off from anyone today.
For your love’s sake. Amen. — Rita Snowden

“He who is virtuous is wise; and he who is wise is good; and he who is good is happy.” — Boethius

“Wisdom is not knowledge, and we must not confound the two. Wisdom is the right use of knowledge.” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon