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I want to share a quote with you that rocked my world when I first read it:
"Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment."What a fantastic notion!
- Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Oh, how I have to heed and learn this one!
It is better to be bewildered than clever.
I know that. Its just that cleverness delights and comforts me so...
Being clever is figuring out (or at least pretending to figure out) how things happen. Being bewildered is allowing yourself to delight in the mystery.
Think of one's enjoyment at a magic show — isn't it better to be amazed than brainy.
What if life were just a big magic show?
Don't we all spend a little too much time hypothesizing, making sense of things, and looking for explanations as to why this or that happened?
I know I do. I come up with myriads of reasons to explain away the mysteries of life I don't understand.
Wouldn't we all be better served wondering?
Euripides wrote, "Cleverness is not wisdom." I agree. Besides, being perennially clever is exhausting. It might be far wiser of us to live in the unknown.
Descartes wrote something that I think points us in the right direction, "In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate."
God, please help us all to be less clever, to contemplate more and to be comfortable being bewildered.
With love,
Rabbi Brian
And, if you care to, click here to see comments on the streetprophets site where this article also went up this week.
