Canter Bridge

We often require no help in order to pave the path to our own ruin. This lamentable task plays to our strength. I can do it all by myself.

The fool is equally adept at locating a scapegoat for the disaster he has brought upon himself. Too often he fingers YHWH for the crime.

One’s own folly leads to ruin, yet the heart rages against the LORD. (Proverbs 19:3 NRSV)

A deep irony of our human condition lies in our tendency to seek our Maker only when things have gone badly. We turn to him in anger and blame after the fact, rather than with our trust and our hunger earlier on.

The wide gaze of biblical wisdom does not imagine that human folly is always the cause of disaster. Life is subject to multiple causes. Yet wisdom knows that we who are foolish often cause our own destruction. The truly foolish then compound their ruin by blaming God.

How different a response is given by repentance and the humility that creates a space for it. If there is ‘rage’ in repentance, it is the dying embers of self-condemnation, not the retrograde misattribution of our pain to YHWH’s doing.

Then—often, if not always—comes fresh air, new light, soft rain, rebirth.

One of the Book of Proverbs‘ most quotable dicta has a meaning more debatable than readers in a quote-seeking mood might prefer.

The most traditional interpretation is captured by the English Standard Version.

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18:24 ESV)

Here the Hebrew להתרעע is understood to derive from רעע, to inflict harm. Continue Reading »

Él es mantequilla, runs an endearing Mexican expression. He’s soft as butter.

It’s a compliment, not a snarky reference to spineless niceness. Niceness has only a little to do with it, and occasionally nothing at all.

Mantequilla (‘butter’) is the gentle though principled capacity to yield, to discover the common cause, to negotiate both fruitfulness and warmth in a human relationship, to prefer the other over oneself. Continue Reading »

Biblical wisdom is loathe to divide the human person into ‘constituent parts’. The main thing about a man is his unity, about a women her cohesion. Precise distinctions between, say, mind, body, and spirit usually pave the first steps on a ditch dressed up like a path, which leads nowhere. Continue Reading »

Why do cultures the world over produce exhortations to work hard?

Because hard work is, well, hard work.

It don’t come easy, as my elders used to remind me. The reward of it is seldom immediate, so it’s easy to cut corners and imagine that nothing’s been lost in the shortcut. To ‘take it easy’ sounds like great advice right up until it produces poverty or damage. Continue Reading »

Here’s yet another reason to be quiet: survival.

A fool’s lips walk into a fight, and his mouth invites a beating. (Proverbs 18:6 ESV)

Loose lips not only sink ships. They also account for a disproportionate percentage of bar-room brawls, spats between neighbors, boardroom eruptions, and fisticuffs in the Walmart parking lot.

Only a fool insists upon flapping his gums every time a thought occurs. Continue Reading »

Someone has placed in my possession two immaculate white business cards containing a mere pair of words written in a neat, understated black script:

Stop talking.

Whether whimsical, mean-spirited, or sagacious, the identity of the donor remains unknown to me. The cards travel with me, mostly for the humor of them but also because—in tormented moments—I wonder whether they mean what they say and were given to me with resolute purpose. Continue Reading »

Sorrow flows up and down the generations like greased lighting.

One begets a dullard to one’s own grief; The father of a villain has no joy. (Proverbs 17:21 JPS)

By contrast, paternal admiration and filial delight move at a slower pace. They grow incrementally, are nourished by passing showers rather than drowned by monsoons, they linger and satisfy like a slow-moving front of cool air that trundles in imperceptibly yet refreshes. Continue Reading »

We seldom imagine that our purpose lies in a relative’s misfortune.

Characteristically, biblical wisdom asks us to re-think:

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. (Proverbs 17:17 ESV)

Given that most readers of this blog are daughters and sons of a culture that has nuclear-ized our understanding of family, we probably need the invitation to imagine the ‘brother’ in question as something wider than a son of the same father and mother. ‘Kin’, though slightly archaic, does not fit badly as a translation of the Hebrew word. ‘Close relative’ loses the proverb’s poetic brevity, but communicates the essence. Continue Reading »