WISDOM • UNDERSTANDING • KNOWLEDGE

On the 20th anniversary of begin2know, I’ve reinvented my site as a blog. For a long time this was a relatively static site, and regretfully often a floundering site. I can’t say yet how often I’ll share, but I will do my best to do so from my heart.

My logo mentions wisdom, understanding, and knowledge… along with humility, grace, and truth. My tagline is “seeking and speaking the truth with humility and grace.” Why? What does this mean?

Various knowledge frameworks often place information or data at the bottom of a pyramid with knowledge somewhere in the middle and wisdom at the top. Wisdom is often defined as accumulated or applied knowledge.

I like to look at this a little differently.

By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.

Pr. 24:3-4 (NVI)

What if understanding and knowledge are built on a foundation of wisdom?

I like to align humility with wisdom, grace with understanding, and truth with knowledge. If we are to have conversations that create and flow from shared meaning, we’ll need to start from a place of humility, where we’re willing to set aside assumptions that might lead us to prejudice in our thinking. As the conversations progress, we’ll need to be gracious in both our questions and responses in order to build understanding. With humility and wisdom as the foundation, grace and understanding will become the framework for our building. We then have an environment ready to accept and be filled with the rare and beautiful treasures of knowledge and truth.