Let the Playing Begin

Recently, I received an email from a good friend who is teaching a course at a local university. This prompted me to think of all my friends that teach and lecture in academia – and I felt a familiar, lonely sigh in my heart.

I never finished university.

Right before my last year I got so busy gigging I thought I would take a year off and tour, and then return afterward to complete my degree.

That was 40 years ago.

Sometimes, accompanied by the aforementioned sigh, I regret my choice.

We choose formal education; not only for the knowledge it imparts, but also for the discipline it shapes in learning.

Done well, formal education illumines how much there is to know, how little we comprehend, and the wonderful adventure of exploring the chasm between the two.

Thankfully, life offers a similar syllabus.

As great as credentialed education is though, there are many ways to ‘seek and find’. And somewhere along the path of discovery, wisdom comes in through the back door.

Wisdom chooses us as we try to make sense of life beyond knowledge – with new experiences and realities.

One can have knowledge without wisdom, but one can’t have wisdom without knowledge, or it is merely an opinion.

A musician was once asked, “What is more important – wisdom or knowledge?” To which he replied,

Without knowledge I could not play the violin.
Without wisdom I could not play the music.

For many of us, the end of summer vacation signals a new year of learning…

Let the playing begin!

The featured image “Oxford Hymnal” is (c) Lancia E. Smith and is used with glad permission for Cultivating and The Cultivating Project.

Roy Salmond

Roy Salmond is a record producer, working out of his studio Whitewater Productions in Vancouver Canada. He’s also an itinerant worship leader, speaker and writer, penning the weekly arts and faith blog: Between The Notes.

www.roysalmond.com