“The Delight of Wisdom”Proverbs 8:1-11, 22-36Leanne Pearce ReedAugust 2, 2015

Last fall, my husband Mark and I heard an interview on NPR with a Japanese home organization guru named Marie Kondo. She had just published a book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. Knowing my love of organizing, Mark got me a copy for Christmas. I suspect you’ve heard of the book by now. It went on to become an international bestseller. It’s been featured in magazines and news shows, talked about at dinner parties and coffee shops. It seems like people all over are decluttering, Marie Kondo-style. They are posting pictures of their tidy closets on Instagram, gushing about their neatly folded socks on Facebook. Inevitably, there’s also been some backlash. The New York Times published a different perspective in a column called “Let’s Celebrate the Art of Clutter.”

Countless books on home organization are published each year. So why has Marie Kondo struck a chord with so many people? Perhaps it has to do with her method. Kondo suggests that the question to ask in decluttering is not “What should I get rid of?” but rather “What should I keep?” And she has a simple criterion for selecting which items to keep. She suggests that you hold item and ask yourself, “Does it spark joy?”

If it does not, then she suggests you offer the item gratitude for its service and let it go. For many, this is a novel and even revolutionary idea, that we ought to live surrounded by what brings us joy. Her method proves to be an interesting exercise. It turns out we hold on to stuff for all kinds of reasons:

• Guilt over things that we bought and didn’t use or wear.• Obligation to hang on to gifts we received, lest we hurt the feelings of the giver. • Fear, that we just might need that item someday.

Some people find a whole new relationship with their possessions and surroundings when instead they focus on joy. Does this spark joy?

Indeed, I can testify that many items in our house did not meet that bar. A few months after I got Kondo’s book, my son Thomas inquired on the whereabouts of some household item. Before I could answer he looked at me and said dryly, “Let me guess. It didn’t spark joy.”

Marie Kondo has sold a lot of books because she has made a connection between the good life and joy. And believe it or not, her approach aligns with some ancient wisdom. Our Scripture reading this morning resounds with joy. It comes from the Book of Proverbs, a text from ancient Israel intended to teach about wisdom and the path to the good life.

In these verses, Wisdom is personified as a woman. She stands on the square, in the public space, in the middle of daily life, and calls to all people, inviting them to follow in her path.

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Wisdom describes being present at the moment of creation. She was the first of God’s acts long ago, she says, present when the mountains were formed and the rivers came into being. Her description recalls the refrain woven through the first creation story of Genesis. You remember: God creates the heavens and the earth, the land and the water, all living the things in the sea, the land and the air -- and each day of creation, “God saw that it was good.” It was good. It was good. It’s a poetic affirmation that all of creation -- including humanity -- was created good.

And according to Proverbs, Wisdom was there, from the very beginning. The text illumines the sheer joy of creation. It portrays Wisdom dancing before the divine as creation comes into being.

then I was beside him, like a master worker;and I was daily his delight,rejoicing before him always,rejoicing in his inhabited worldand delighting in the human race.

This passage affirms that God brought forth creation in joy, an expression of divine delight. And God delights in particular in humanity.

Now, there are strands of our Christian tradition that teach us to be suspicious of pleasure and delight; if it feels good, it must be sinful. But that’s not the message of Woman Wisdom. She proclaims that God created the world in delight. She seeks to draw humanity into relationship with God, a relationship founded in joy, developed in delight. Wisdom’s way is a joyful, exuberant path toward the divine. As we follow Wisdom’s path, we are drawn toward God. “Happy is the one who listens to me,” says Woman Wisdom, “for whoever finds me finds life.”

Seeking Wisdom, then, includes seeking joy. Mary Oliver has figured this out. In her poem, “Mindful,” she writes:

Every Day   I see or hear      something         that more or lesskills me   with delight,      that leaves me         like a needlein the haystack   of light.      It is what I was born for—         to look, to listen,to lose myself   inside this soft world—      to instruct myself         over and overin joy,

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   and acclamation.      Nor am I talking         about the exceptional,the fearful, the dreadful,   the very extravagant—      but of the ordinary,         the common, the very drabthe daily presentations.   Oh, good scholar,      I say to myself,         how can you helpbut grow wise   with such teachings      as these—         the untrimmable lightof the world,   the ocean's shine,      the prayers that are made         out of grass?

Reflecting on this poem, Parker Palmer writes:

It requires no special talent or effort to look at our world and point out the things that numb us, or dumb us down, or depress us. In fact, it's a no-brainer! But becoming keenly and consistently aware of what's good, true, beautiful, and life-giving around us and within us demands a discipline: we must open our eyes, minds, and hearts. And we must keep them open.1

He’s right, of course. Seeing the negative doesn’t take much effort. It headlines the news, it scrolls across our computer screens. We click on the article. We slow down to get a better look as we pass the accident on the road. We lean in to hear that bit of gossip, the latest scandal in the office or neighborhood. We bemoan the state of the the government or the church or kids today or the whole world. No, none of that takes much effort or special skill.

But noticing beauty . . . Fixing our gaze on joy . . Paying attention to what’s hopeful and life giving . . .That takes discipline. It takes practice, a conscious decision, day after day, to seek out life.

Such a practice doesn’t mean putting on rose-colored glasses and pretending that there’s no pain or suffering or injustice in the world. Of course there is. Some of you know it all too well. But there is also beauty. Joy. Delight. Hope. Life. Wisdom calls us to pay attention to these things.

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1 Parker Palmer, “To Instruct Myself Over and Over in Joy,” February 11, 2015, http://www.onbeing.org/blog/to-instruct-myself-over-and-over-in-joy/7296 .

Pause and think. Where have you seen joy? When did you last smile with delight?

Every season has its own pleasures. There’s the crisp air the glorious of the leaves in the fall; the beauty of black branches against a pale sky in wintertime; the tender greens and bright blossoms of early spring. But now, in this season, we are surrounded by the pleasures of summer:The extravagant sweetness of watermelons and peaches; the exquisite flavor of a homegrown tomato. The refreshing cool of a dip in the pool or a lake on these hot humid days.The sound of a place you love -- maybe the waves of the Gulf lapping the shore, or the birds waking up the forest in the early morning, or the laughter of grandchildren playing in the sprinkler in your own backyard.

So think for a moment. Remember. Where have you seen joy? What “kills you with delight” as Mary Oliver puts it?

It takes practice to focus on joy, discipline to notice delight. Palmer writes, “The reward for that discipline is great: as we open up, we start to see beauty everywhere, not only in nature, but in human nature.”2

Author Kathleen Norris recalls sitting at the departure gate at an airport and observing a young couple with their infant. The baby was staring intently at other people, and as soon as he recognized a human face, no matter whose it was, no matter if it was young or old, pretty or ugly, bored or happy or worried-looking he would respond with absolute delight. She writes:

It was beautiful to see. Our drab departure gate had become the gate of heaven. And as I watched that baby play with any adult who would allow it. . . I realized that this is how God looks at us, staring into our faces to be delighted, to see the creature he made and called good, along with the rest of creation. And, as Psalm 139 puts it, darkness is as nothing to God, who can look right through whatever evil we’ve done in our lives to the creature made in the divine image.

She concludes, “I suspect that only God and well-loved infants can see this way.”3

Perhaps we can learn to see this way as well, if we answer Wisdom’s call, if instruct ourselves in joy.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

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2 Ibid.

3 Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead, 1998) 150-151.