A Reflection & Prayer for Wisdom

By three methods we may learn wisdom: 

• First, by reflection, which is noblest; 
• Second, by imitation, which is easiest; 
• and third by experience, which is the bitterest. - Confucius

Reflecting today on many things. Endings, like the school year, and beauty.

For Beauty, it is said to be in the eye of the beholder. We may each have our own vision of what is beautiful. 

And for Homeschooling, it is indeed beautiful to me. I'm committed to it. Beautiful things usually take effort and homeschooling, like other hard work, can bring worthwhile results.

Our beauty and our commitments (homeschooling) can be a "bitter experience" to others. 

In our world today, across many areas and topics, there are examples of one-way tolerance. "I can like what I like but if you like what YOU like...then you're hating on me."  

Tiresome.

We fall into traps, imitating the wail of society that seeks to silence.

A friend shared with me that in sharing what was beautiful to her, others felt she wasn't being "real." Why is there distrust of beauty, seeking to silence it? Why is her beauty not real?  

"Real" is likely having something troubling you and being triggered by it's opposite. 

Experience reminds me and teaches me what beauties and committments to focus on.  If experience proves bitter, God will bring something good and beautiful out of it. 

I pray He shows me how to bridge the divide, the distance, in communicating what is beautiful to me in a world of triggers. Conflict is the opposite of beauty, to me, and I am in search of the wisdom to transcend it with others.

What wisdom can I find in reflection, imitation and experience?  To return to this daily prayer, written by John Henry Cardinal Newman, may I reflect/imitate/be-the-experience of True Beauty...Wisdom Himself!

Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance 

everywhere I go.

Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.

Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,

That my life may only be a radiance of Yours.

Shine through me, and be so in me

That every soul I come in contact with

May feel Your presence in my soul.

Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine,

So to shine as to be a light to others;

The light, O Jesus will be all from You; none of it will be mine;

It will be you, shining on others through me.

Let me thus praise You the way You love best, 

by shining on those around me.

Let me preach You without preaching, 

not by words but by my example,

By the catching force of the sympathetic influence 

of what I do,

The evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.

Amen.