Monday Meditation: Wisdom Economies
Arriving on Wednesday, mid-week
Dearest Becoming Ones: I am writing on Wednesday, because Monday’s meditation has finally bubbled up. I’m going slower these days, as collapse accelerates. I find myself in tension with the world, with spectacle, and wanting to nurture wisdom in all I do, as I turn my life into ritual.
I will keep up with my writing while I’m away in Europe. I head to Zurich today to speak at the University of Zurich at this conference. I’ve been asked to speak on Activist Theology, which I’m looking forward to doing. The remarks will be published in a manuscript, so my one hour plenary remarks will need to be reworked for publication later this summer. I look forward to letting you know when those remarks are available.
After Zurich, I’ll be in Belfast, London, Cork, and Verona. I’ll be hosted by people in their homes and exploring peace and reconciliation and non-oppositional logics while I’m away. I’ll also be eating with people for ethnographic research for my next book on belonging and freedom that I’ve been working on at the Friendship Library all year in Friendship, NY.
I look forward to being in touch on Friday with the Friday Care Package, writing on possibility! Stay tuned for a Zurich inspired Care Package on possibility!
Keep Hope Alive!
Paz, —RCE+
Dear Becoming Ones:
Even though the Monday Meditation is arriving on a Wednesday, wisdom still guides us. Wisdom is not bound to the clock or the calendar. Wisdom arrives slowly, like dusk stretching across the hills of Allegany County. Wisdom arrives through grief retreats and library conversations, through strangers at the table and the quiet knowing of our own bodies. Wisdom arrives when we finally become still enough to hear what has been trying to speak beneath the noise of empire.
We are living in an economy obsessed with extraction. An economy that measures value through productivity, speed, accumulation, domination. The neoliberal imagination wants us exhausted and isolated, convinced that our worth is tied to output. Byung-Chul Han reminds us that burnout is not simply personal fatigue; it is the spiritual condition of a culture that has forgotten how to rest, behold, and belong.
But there is another economy available to us.
The wisdom economy.
The wisdom economy cannot be traded on Wall Street. It does not reward scarcity or hoarding. It emerges in kitchens, libraries, trains, gardens, prayer circles, recovery meetings, and community tables. It emerges wherever people risk turning toward one another again.
Wisdom asks different questions than capitalism.
Not:
How much did you produce?
But:
Did you remain tender?
Not:
How efficient were you?
But:
Did you notice who was left behind?
Not:
How much power did you accumulate?
But:
Did you help someone survive?
The wisdom economy teaches us that knowledge without care becomes domination. Information without embodiment becomes noise. Intelligence without love becomes machinery.
I think this is why elders matter.
I think this is why stories matter.
I think this is why meals matter.
Because wisdom is not merely data transfer. Wisdom is relational. It moves through presence. Through attention. Through apprenticeship to living. Through learning how to sit beside sorrow without trying to conquer it.
James Baldwin once wrote that “the purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers.” Wisdom does something similar. Wisdom interrupts certainty. Wisdom softens the ego. Wisdom reminds us that we belong to one another in fragile and necessary ways.
And perhaps this is why the world feels so starved right now.
We are drowning in information while dying from a lack of wisdom.
The algorithms know how to capture our attention, but they do not know how to help us grieve. The market knows how to monetize loneliness, but it cannot teach us how to love each other well. The empire knows how to extract labor, but it does not know how to nourish the soul.
Wisdom economies move differently.
They move at the speed of trust.
At the speed of compost.
At the speed of bread rising.
At the speed of healing.
In the wisdom economy, a conversation at the library matters. Cooking for a grieving friend matters. Sitting quietly with your body matters. Taking a walk without your phone matters. Calling your mother matters. Learning how to apologize matters. Resting matters.
These gestures may seem small in an age of spectacle, but the small things are often where wisdom hides.
Even now, especially now, wisdom still guides us.
Not toward perfection.
Not toward domination.
Not toward certainty.
But toward each other.
And perhaps that is enough for today.
A small turning.
A shared table.
A slower breath.
A wiser way of being alive together.
May wisdom guide you this week.
May you resist the violence of urgency.
May you trust the slow intelligence of your body.
May you remember that another economy is already emerging among us whenever we choose care over control, presence over performance, and relationship over fear.
Poco a poco.
Paso a paso.
We become otherwise together.
Until next time, —Roberto+
