Perhaps you've heard of The North Face, a leading purveyor of outdoor clothing and equipment that began in the mid-Sixties in Berkeley, California.  Once small, it is now massive, a corporation with thousands of employees around the globe.  Its products are first rate and technically astute:  if you can afford them, buy them.  Everything comes with a lifetime guarantee.
     I've written here before about Doug Tompkins, the entrepreneur who established The North Face and who, tragically, perished in a kayaking accident at the age of seventy-two in 2015.  Before he died, Tompkins and his wife, Kristen, had begun to arrange to donate millions of acres of wilderness in the spectacular Patagonia region of Chile for a series of unforgettably beautiful national parks.
     Recently, Kristen completed the donation process, creating one of the most magnificent stretches of protected wilderness areas on the planet.  Prior to his death, Tompkins was not always understood by the locals; not everyone grasped the importance of what he was doing.  In light of his remarkable donation and how it stirred fresh memories of his passing, however, people have begun to appreciate his vision.  They have come to see his wisdom.

     
Too often wisdom is cast aside in the interests of profit.  In addition, too often wisdom is framed and interpreted through the lens of our own wants and needs.  Rarely do we know whether we can properly call our visions wise.  Who can know?
    Maybe that's why Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, reminded his readers that although we revere much of what we corporately determine is wise, we cannot necessarily insist that it is true, much less truth.  Again, how do we know?
     We don't.  All we know that what is genuinely wise is beyond our human ken.  We are left to pick away at the intimations of the transcendence in which we live our lives.  And to always believe we see, as Paul said, "in a riddle."
     Faith is difficult, isn't it?