Ecc Study Two: Wisdom and Knowledge

Study Number Two

Reread Ecclesiastes 1:12-18 and 2:12-16.

“have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge”

“I don’t know why they chose you of all people, such a poor student, for this privilege,” Prof. Michaels said with a wink, “but I think you’d better accept it. This prestigious university only offers four teaching graduate assistantships at a time in the English department. And the English profs are terribly persnickety about who they offer them to. They tend to be highly offended when turned down and consequently never willing to offer such favors again to those who esteem their benevolence so little.”
“But I didn’t even apply,” Clare said. “And what else would I want my English teachers to do for me? Surely they’ll still be willing to be references for me on my resume. That’s all I want.”
“Maybe not,” Prof. Michaels said.
“But how can anyone expect me to be excited to get something I didn’t ask for?”
“Sometimes we don’t know what we want or aren’t aware of what we’re capable of,” said Prof. Michaels. “You might find teaching to be very enjoyable, very fulfilling. You might not. But you might as well try if someone thinks you may be capable of doing it and doing it well.”
“That’s not necessarily positive,” said Clare.
“No, it isn’t,” the professor agreed. “So will you think about the assistantship? I happen to know you don’t have any other plans for after graduation. Maybe this opportunity is the reason—it very well could be. You did so well in your English classes. I think you’re a very capable young woman, Clare.”
Clare knew that coming from Prof. Michaels it was very high praise. She wondered what she really did want to do—besides write a book; she’d always thought she’d like to be a writer—and if there were anything she could do that would really make her happy.
For now, she supposed, she’d try out this teaching business.

Good grief, Clare thought, as she waited for her student to finish her question. Was the girl really unaware that Clare had just answered that very question twice? No, this information about critical theories would not be on the test, Clare said again, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice. Clare just thought it useful for her students to know about these theories. Just for personal enrichment, imagine that. Of course, Rachel was neither aware of what Clare was discussing nor of its usefulness nor of the fact that her question was one another student had just asked the teacher. She wasn’t trying to be funny or frustrating. Rachel was far too nice of a girl to make fun of her teacher or try to give her a hard time and far too dense of a girl to ever bring her much joy. Clare sighed.
Serena on the other hand, was truly a pleasure to teach. She was thoughtful, soft-spoken, hard-working. She was always quick to grasp the concepts Clare strived to convey and many times she was also able to develop them further herself. She could really connect with the literature she was reading, the words and ideas both.
When they studied Blake’s “My luve is like a red, red rose, or like a melody that’s sweetly played in tune,” Serena’s response to Clare’s question “How is love like these things?” was far more compelling than those of the other students.
“It’s sweet, passionate like red, harmonious,” others said. Good, but pretty typical responses. One poor, jaded soul said something about roses having thorns.
Serena’s comment about not being able to get a catchy tune out of your head grabbed Clare’s interest particularly as Serena suggested that love similarly sometimes seems to have a life of its own and often involves a certain degree of obsession as well as possible frustration.
But for being such a quick girl, Serena wasn’t necessarily wise. She perhaps spoke from personal experience about the nature of “luv.” She was dating a classmate who seemed to Clare to be a terrible match for her. He was a goof-off who didn’t even groom himself very well, his hair and clothing always rumpled, his face partially shaven, as though he didn’t know how to shave properly. He wasn’t very intelligent; at least he didn’t really seem to have intellectual aspirations that were inclined toward performing well in his English classes. Clare couldn’t imagine that he studied much at all for the tests or spent much time on the papers with his work being so poor. He actually wrote the following sentences in a paper for her class, spelling mistakes included: “Shakespear is real smart. His stories are real popular. His tragedies are the best because theres a lot of killing in them. Everybody dies.” Clare wasn’t sure what might make him appeal to a girl like Serena. He definitely didn’t seem like the type with whom one could have “a marriage of true minds,” exalted in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 114. But maybe that wasn’t what Serena wanted.
Serena’s eyes lit up when he smiled at her. Her gaze continually strayed to him and if her attention lagged, he was responsible. He’d be whispering some little comment in her ear that Clare had a feeling was disparaging of the English teacher.
He was one of the students who made Clare feel stupid or at least feel like what she was doing, trying to teach students through the study of literature to understand, evaluate, and contribute to the world around them, was pointless, as well as utterly hopeless. She’d finally finished a book she thought had some potential and sent out queries to a couple publishers only to be rejected by both of them. If she could just get someone’s attention, if there were just something about her or her writing that would make her stay in the mind like a catchy song.
She wanted to help people, but it was a great deal of work and so many times she just wasn’t able to find the words she needed or wanted. Too many times there was no true, for-sure solution to someone’s issues and it seemed wrong to imply that there might be. Too many times the so-called cure was in some ways worse than the illness or more often, there simply was no cure, no answers of any kind, even poor ones. “You could try this or this or this, but there’s no guarantee that any one of these will actually work.” You still may not be able to resolve your differences. Your daughter or sister or friend may still make wrong choices.
Was wisdom knowing there were no real answers? That the so-called wise and the so-called foolish are not that different after all and that wisdom and virtue are not always rewarded and foolishness and vice are not always punished? Or were there real answers and was there justice after all, with wisdom the road to finding them, a road that was shadowed by trees and turns, so that there was no way to see any sign of the destination when you stood at the start of it?

Questions to Answer

1. How is study—gaining and conveying knowledge--a burden?

2. How can wisdom bring grief?

3. How does Clare’s knowledge make her unhappy? Does she think it can or should bring her happiness?

4. What does Serena’s knowledge do and what does it not do for her?

5. Do you find obtaining and/or passing on knowledge to be wearisome? What has your learning done for you and what hasn’t it done?