Times Of Wisdom

Christmas Day 2021 sees the release of a Netflix series, Stories of a Generation with Pope Francis, based on this book. Pope Francis views elders as reservoirs of wisdom and historical memory and believes their insights will offer future generations much-needed understanding and direction. More than 250 people were interviewed and Loyola Press sent a collection of stories to the Vatican. These encompassed universal themes of love, loss, survival, hope, peace in the face of unimaginable tragedy, and above all, faith. Pope Francis received every story, prayed over them, and responded with sensitivity and grace to 31 of the stories and the issues they raise. In his Preface, Pope Francis lays out his reasons for this collection of wisdom stories and the movement he hopes it inspires. He also contributes as a fellow elder, offering a story from his own life at the start of each chapter . And in his own wise and compassionate way, he serves as a spiritual shepherd, commenting on dozens of heartfelt stories.

These are volatile times. Fear, suspicion, and cynicism are chronic. A mere tweet inflames the passions of millions while click-bait “hot takes” stoke the amygdalas of everyone with an Internet connection. We treat those not in our tribe as a threat and deem anyone with a different opinion as evil. Mistaking myopia for measure, we lack all sense of proportion in our judgments. We are shortsighted, mired in the present, ignorant of history, and blind to the future. We thought that technology would save us by connecting us to each other and the world’s information. Instead, it enticed our vices, encouraged our biases, and eroded the one virtue we need now more than ever: wisdom. A Time for Wisdom is for readers who feel beleaguered by the incivility of the modern world, dispirited by its coarse rhetoric and toxic partisanship. It is an invitation to escape the shallow cacophony and restore peace and perspective to our daily lives. Written by two psychologists, the book takes the best scientific research on wisdom and integrates it with timeless concepts that have, for ages, guided troubled souls through life’s hardships. From this foundation, the authors present four steps we can follow to practice wisdom in the 21st Century: Receiving knowledge. Practicing detachment. Experiencing tranquility. Cultivating transcendence. These are profound and spiritual principles that can bring us immense satisfaction when we aspire to live by them. In A Time for Wisdom, the authors show us how. They commend a course of action towards the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, towards calm and clear moral reasoning. They lead us out of the circus of contemporary life and show us a path beyond our petty self-centeredness. By journeying along that path, we can, like the great sages and scientists before us, rise above the immediacy of the moment and partake of the numinous and the infinite.

A reasoned yet urgent call to embrace and protect the essential, practical human quality that has been drummed out of our lives: wisdom. It's in our nature to want to succeed. It's also human nature to want to do right. But we've lost how to balance the two. How do we get it back? Practical Wisdom can help. "Practical wisdom" is the essential human quality that combines the fruits of our individual experiences with our empathy and intellect-an aim that Aristotle identified millennia ago. It's learning "the right way to do the right thing in a particular circumstance, with a particular person, at a particular time." But we have forgotten how to do this. In Practical Wisdom, Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe illuminate how to get back in touch with our wisdom: how to identify it, cultivate it, and enact it, and how to make ourselves healthier, wealthier, and wiser.

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Seattle Times and Kirkus Review The final novel from a great American storyteller. Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig’s beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an eleven-year-old’s imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for “female trouble” in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin. There Donal is in for a rude surprise: Aunt Kate–bossy, opinionated, argumentative, and tyrannical—is nothing like her sister. She henpecks her good-natured husband, Herman the German, and Donal can’t seem to get on her good side either. After one contretemps too many, Kate packs him back to the authorities in Montana on the next Greyhound. But as it turns out, Donal isn’t traveling solo: Herman the German has decided to fly the coop with him. In the immortal American tradition, the pair light out for the territory together, meeting a classic Doigian ensemble of characters and having rollicking misadventures along the way. Charming, wise, and slyly funny, Last Bus to Wisdom is a last sweet gift from a writer whose books have bestowed untold pleasure on countless readers.

This book examines if it is possible to teach wisdom. It considers how people at different times and places have engaged the age-old question of how (or whether) we can learn to live a good life, and what that life is like. Offering a range of perspectives, coverage considers Greek and Confucian philosophy; Christian, Islamic and Buddhist religion; African tradition, as well as contemporary scientific approaches to the study of wisdom.

Today we see an increasing number of headlines focused on Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism, bringing the matter of being Christian under great scrutiny. As Christians, we must ask ourselves whether we can be scrutinized and found desirable by both God and man. Many who profess to be Christians might say this is impossible, but is that really what the Scriptures teach? Man’s wrath is very different from God’s wrath. God is slow to anger. On a human level in the world around us, individuals and even entire groups are continually riled up and insulting one another. None of this effectuates the righteousness of God. James 1:21 entreats us to leave all uncleanness and remains of malice and receive with meekness the word ingested within you, which is able to cause your souls to be saved. God has the purpose for his children to be examples to those around them. The books of James and Jude have much to say regarding what this should look like and how it is accomplished, which is to receive the wisdom prepared for us. Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning. (James 1:16-17) God desires to give good and perfect gifts to his children who ask in faith, not doubting anything. In fact, he is the only source of anything good and perfect. He is the Father of lights. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world and who does not change, and his plans and expectations for us remain constant. Jesus told his disciples that corporately, Ye are the light of the world. The plan of the Father of lights is to bring us out of darkness and into his light so that he can place his life and love and light in us for all the world to see.

The text before you is an effort by the author to identify the reasons why counseling fails. He judged through his experience that too many counselees were simply walking away from counseling. They stated there had been no growth, or change, only dissatisfaction with their "life in Christ." Thus, there seemed to be a "missing" ingredient. Following a study of the principal themes of Proverbs the author become certain about what was lacking. He determined that his clients were working without ‘The Fear of the Lord." Their approach lacked a sincere reverence for God and few desired to make Him preeminent. Thus failure was certain. "The Fear of the Lord" is the means by which wisdom, knowledge and understanding is bestowed; humility is gained and true charity becomes the practice of the Believer’s life. Not until one truly makes God preeminent does real, biblical change: sanctification, satisfaction and true joy, become possible.