Learning Wisdom in the Writing

When I was learning to play guitar, my teacher gave me this advice: as soon as you have three chords under your belt, start writing songs. One of the best ways to grow as a guitarist, he said, is just start writing. Experiment with what works. Discover what doesn't. Get comfortable making mistakes, and fudging it, and making music something creative.

It was really wise advice.

And I'm thinking about it these days because I've been thinking a lot about proverbs (the book and the genre).

I don't think modern western Christians really know what to do with Proverbs (the book), because proverbs (as a general genre) don't live in our culture the way they might have at one time. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman describes an oral culture from Western Africa where the adjudication of civil disputes was a matter of finding in the common stock of oral wisdom the proverb that best applied to the particular case. Imagine going to court because your business partner had cheated you out of $150,000, and the judge passes sentence by referring you to the saying: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Now imagine all the parties involved (including you) left the courtroom sincerely believing that justice had been served.

Proverbs are not just catchy sayings to decorate our fridge magnets. They are ambiguous vessels of wisdom that somehow gather together and distill insightful observations about the world as it should be-- that somehow, in their utterance, actually invoke that world-- and that somehow give context and meaning for the otherwise confusing events of living. The wise application of the right proverb at the right time is a profound creative act that somehow participates in God's shalom.

And it's hard for linear, rationalistic thinking to make that kind of sense out of a proverb.

But I remember my OT prof saying once that he'd tried his hand at writing some proverbs, and I'm thinking about my guitar teacher's advice, and it occurrs to me that maybe one of the best ways to learn about proverbs is by trying to write some of my own. So over the last few days I've been trying my hand at gathering together and distilling some insightful observations about the world as it should be. And let me tell you: it's really hard. A proverb needs to ring true without cliche, needs to be pithy without being flippant, needs to be precise enough to enlighten but ambiguous enough to apply in any number of situations.

It has to sound like something you've known all along, but only just heard yesterday.

For what it's worth (and I don't think that's much) here's my list after a week or so of work. (The ones marked with a + are sayings that I've used often as a classroom teacher; the ones marked with a * are based on ideas from other sources.)

Happy is he whose heart is too big to fit on his sleeve.

He who seeks to dance alone can only dance to silence.

It is only the starving man who talks incessantly of food.+

"All I have is three chords and the truth"-- this is the fool's boast and the wise man's apology.

There is no provenience for the archaeology of the self.

The truth is in the telling when the teller is in the truth.

Wisdom crosses the desert with a stone beneath her tongue, slaking her thirst with her own saliva.*

To listen well is to find the child mature at last and the old man young again.

A good thing need not always be a pleasant thing.+

Only a hack cannot celebrate the masterpiece of another.*

When to end-- this is the second lesson of wisdom.

The true maestro is he who knows when not to play.

The question of modern art is not whether or not you could have painted it, but whether or not you did.

Only he who can manage his own website can choose to be a Luddite.

A mask may be inevitable, but not which one you'll wear.
Food for the mind and books for the body, as exercise is for the soul.

There are only four feelings-- mad, sad, glad and scared-- but O in what infinite combinations they come.

Narcissus and the writer: both alike stare into inky pools, searching for an echo of their experience.

Loving is knowing and knowing is leaving and leaving is coming back again.

The equality of unequals is inequality.+*

The only stupid question is the question left unasked.+

Sarcasm is the protest of the weak.+
Beware of both the connoisseur and the spendthrift in the marketplace of ideas. The former will buy only his brand, the later will buy anything.

Love and fear alike are a bird in a fist: to hold it hides it; to look must let it go.*

The secret to never having to stand in line is in only wanting things when no one else does.

He who fishes for truth alone will surely come home skunked.

It is impossible to say in a single picture that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Hope is a knife-edge sharpened by despair.*

Every statistic is but a mathematically narrated myth.

Only great folly shouts for silence.

Sanctimony is often the child of guilt.