Strange Wisdom: Part One

A professor once scrawled something in the margins of one of my poems. His handwriting was so awful, it took me a moment to figure out what he’d written: Gnomic.

As in my writing was small and furtive? Ugly and troublesome?

The dictionary explained that gnomic means a clever observation, a strange wisdom, often hiding in simple language.

Oh, like a Zen koan, such as, “What gets lost in the river is found in the river.”

Or like the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus says, “Come to know what is in front of you, and that which is hidden from you will become clear to you.”

Duh. Gnomic and Gnostic share the same root.

Whatever you call them, these terse and wild declarations invite us into a strange wisdom—the knowing and the unknowing, the mystery that matters.

This past week, I stumbled across two such gems in the I Ching that grabbed a hold of me and won’t let go. I’ll wrestle with one here and save the other for next week. First up:

In a village, the well does not move.

I live on a busy street in a small town. People walk, run, and drive along this street all day (and sometimes, all night) long.

Bustling is the word that comes to mind, and as I sit and watch, I often think about all the lives coming and going, rushing and meandering, and returning again and again—like the dog who hops up and down, up and down on every single bench as his owner walks by with him day after day after day.

Yes, there’s an eternal flow here, but even though some people might seem harried, I bet it’s nothing compared to life in an actual village, at least in the days of yore.

Food wasn’t fetched from the store. It had to be planted by hand and plow. Then tended, then harvested. In other words, all kinds of work even before the work of making it into a meal.

And raw-knuckled hands had to wash every single piece of clothing by hand.

The effort it took just to exist. I can’t even imagine.

And in the center of all this (and more)—the well—that did not move. The one that sustained all that hath life and breath. The well, present, still, and clear.

Whenever and wherever humans have lived, it’s been easy to get tangled up and knocked about by the demands of life. Just as it’s been easy to turn life into How much! How busy! How effin’ exhausted!

In a village, the well does not move.

It’s an invitation to come to the steady center.

To trust the fresh and nourishing source deep inside. To know this well-ness is where our joy and radiance reside.

In the wild dance of life, it can be easy to forget the power and steadiness of our center. We can trust it is there. Always. The well—fed by mysterious and invisible streams—does not move.

Tired?

Go to the well.

In need of healing?

Go to the well.

The fresh and the still, the clear and the abundant.

It’s there, in the center of your being.

Always.