Wisdom

The wisdom of the scribe depends on the opportunity of leisure;
only the one who has little business can become wise. Ecclus 38:24

Hmmmm......well. This caught me off guard as I was happily contemplating nothing in particular because I really did not agree with this particular piece of wisdom - or at least not the way it comes across.

Wisdom seems to me something more than that which you pick up by deliberate effort. So to say that those who have little time to spend reading and learning cannot be wise does not make sense to me - there are plenty of wise people who rarely if ever have read a book or studied - however that is not to say that learning is wasted or that learning does not produce knowledge. Academic knowledge does come from study, and often the discipline of study produces other fruits.

But wisdom seems to me to be more of a process and a gift - part of that process may well be study but a lot of that process is living.