The saints and the Scriptures tell us there is no true wisdom without faith. Consider this:

1. We start with information, a combination of facts and data
2. We place the data in larger frames, making more connections, and it becomes “knowledge
3. We analyze it, and it becomes “intelligence.”
4. We come to insight inside that intelligence, and we have “intuition,” which is the source of most genius.
5. We connect our single field of discipline with other disciplines, and we have the beginnings of “understanding” the unified field.
6. We allow all of this “to rest in the largest conversation possible about things” and accept that reality is both knowable and unknowable mystery. while still honoring all the previous levels of knowledge. We can now see things non-dualistically. “Transcend and Include” is now our style.

Everything belongs. This is “wisdom”!

How do you move from one stage to the next? By letting go of total reliance upon the previous stage. To keep growing, you must endure darkness and self-doubt. The person who refuses to allow darkness and self-doubt will never move on.

– Richard Rohr

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

The house without a window is Hell:
to make a window is the foundation of true religion.
Don’t thrust your axe upon every thicket:
come, use your axe to cut open a window.
~ Rumi

In this town the last house stands
as lonely as if it were the last house in the world

The highway, which the tiny town is not able to stop,
slowly goes deeper out into the night.

The tiny town is only a passing-over place,
worried and afraid, between two huge spaces –
a path running past houses instead of a bridge.

And those who leave the town wander a long way off
and many perhaps die on the road.