Column: Spirituality, Lovingwisdom

Shall we make a word? All it takes to make a word, you know, is for people to start using it and keep it up. Eventually, the lexicographers notice and add an entry in the next edition of their dictionaries.

I propose we make the word “lovingwisdom.”

Our new word is formed by the time-honored process of compounding: All we’ve done is stick “loving” and “wisdom” together. That’s just how to write it, though. For it to really become a new word, it has to do some work. So, what does “lovingwisdom” mean?

Perhaps it reminds us of another compound word that shares one of its parts: lovingkindness. Unless you regularly recite the Psalms in an archaic translation, “lovingkindness” likely isn’t in your everyday vocabulary of 1,000 to 3,000 words, but it’s probably among the 20,000 or more words you know. It’s long been used to translate the Hebrew word “chesed,” which to persons of Jewish faith is a quality of God’s character and people’s covenantal relationships. English-speaking Buddhists also use it to express their concept “metta,” meditatively practiced by calmly thinking, “May all beings be free from suffering; may all beings be happy; may all beings be healed.”

What’s the extra sauce “lovingkindness” has that “kindness” lacks? Certainly, there’s love in kindness and kindness in love, so are we spending a 50-cent locution when a five-cent word would do? Maybe so. But in my own personal dictionary, there’s enough difference for a distinction. To me, kindness is nearsighted, in a good way. It has someone specific in its view to be kind to. Kindness is local.

Lovingkindness sees all of that and more. It holds those who are near in its regard, but it also looks up, down and all around at the whole, the big picture, “far down the future’s broadening way.” Lovingkindness is universal.

In the same way, I think, lovingwisdom should bring a little more to the table. Like wisdom, it would recognize everyone, everything, is profoundly, pristinely individual and unique — and it would regard all those glittering instances of existence with goodwill. Like wisdom, lovingwisdom would comprehend everyone and everything is connected and related — and it would lend all the strength it could to those bonds. Like wisdom, lovingwisdom would want to make better choices — and it would not choose for itself alone.

I am just wise enough to know I am not wise. Far too often, I fool myself. I am just kind enough to know how hard I can be. But I’d like to be wiser; I wish I were kinder. I would be, I’ve thought, if I said to myself of every event, every encounter, “This, too, I meet with kindness. This, too, I meet with curiosity. This, too, I meet with clarity.”

Now that we’ve made a word for it, I’ll seek lovingwisdom, as well. And sow it in some sentences. Will you, too? Words do real work in the world. And in these times in which Wisdom takes her stand at the crossroads to call for followers and finds so few, we need all the good words we can get.

The Reverend Doug Job does interim ministry for congregations in transition and keeps good memories and friends made while serving a church in Cape. He's grateful to live for now in Hannibal, Mo., a short stroll from a ravine with a thriving stand of dock. You may share your favorites to forage with him at revdarkwater@gmail.com.