Country Store
This apple is part of a larger painting that I am working on. So in progress you might say. It is a bowl with apples, lemons, pears, avocados and some yellow squash. When you visit the local country store you can buy almost all of these for a great fruit painting.
©Laurie Justus Pace Graphics One Design 1998 -2011
Knowledge and Wisdom
The Tree of Knowledge is part of the story from the Garden of Eden. We mostly know it as the apple tree. Eve was basically dared to taste the fruit and Adam stood by her side and never suggested it was a bad thing to do... so humankind took 'knowledge'. Some references refer to it as the Tree of Conscience, in Hebrew, .עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע
In the beginning, if Adam and Eve lived in the garden without knowledge, they lived simply with all the creatures in the garden. There was no thought to hunger, working, or household chores. It was perfection as God created it all. By eating the apple, they immediately became thinkers. They possessed the ability to think about things, right and wrong. Previously this power had only been God's, not theirs. With this new knowledge or conscience, they became separated from God's perfection and discovered the shame of disobedience. They became thinkers and no longer did they live that simple life of love and faith. With conscience aka knowledge, they quickly experienced shame, guilt, embarrassment, anger, disappointment and probably every other feeling you could name. Before the apple they knew none of this.
Now life was sweat labor and the pain of bearing children. Life was a struggle to exist, survive, eat and live for the next day. Have our lives changed at all? Have we taken this knowledge to the next step... wisdom?
I think not.... or we would not be so messed up. How many centuries and lives will come and go before we use all this knowledge and find wisdom? From an early beginning of direct experience man slammed right into thinking about things and controlling things. If you ever manage to put thought and language out of a situation you being to experience things directly on a sensory level. Our human addiction to over thinking things and acting to control them makes our life of separation from God continue.
Wisdom is gained from a deep understanding of people and situations. It gives us the ability to choose how to act or react with out having to think about things. It applies and uses both perception and knowledge at the same time. Wisdom is made up of knowledge and experience.
Knowing others is intelligence;knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. (Tao Te Ching, 33, tr. S. Mitchell)
ON the Club 47 challenge, I managed 208 minutes of exercise this week. I hope if you have taken to heart trying to add something into your life for positive change that you are doing it one day at a time just as we all are doing it. See more about the challenge in my sidebar to the right. I have the knowledge to know exercise means a healthier body and mind. I now have the wisdom to DO IT!
Laurie
Through presumption comes nothing but strife, But with those who receive counsel is wisdom.
Proverbs 14:8
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