Tactics, strategy, and prudence

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-Korean couple in traditional garb at a game of baduk, called “go” in the West

When I was a boy, my older brother taught me to play chess, and I enjoyed it. When I was around 12, I think, I received a game called “Pente” as a Christmas present. This, I learned from my uncle, is a novel variation of the above mentioned Oriental game. I loved Pente. I took to it like a duck takes to water; I was instantly successful, unbeatable. I liked it so much that noone in my family wanted to play with me after a while. I had a best friend who played with me; eventually he, too, refused. Then, in a fit of desperation, I happened to ask his older sister to play me. She quickly beat me. Then again. And again. I played her many times over the next few years, but I never beat her. Not once.

I learned the value of humility. I learned the value of tactics. I learned the value of strategy. I learned the difference. I learned about pacing and self-discipline. I learned about knowing when to not start a game. (Partially as a result of this, perhaps, I never went to the casinos in nearby Reno when I was stationed in NoCal.) In short, I learned to begin to practice the virtue of prudence.

Ecclesiastes 1:17-18 says, “And I have given my heart to know prudence, and learning, and errors, and folly: and I have perceived that in these also there was labour, and vexation of spirit, because in much wisdom there is much indignation: and he that addeth knowledge, addeth also labour.”

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is the beginning of work. The vexation of our confounded sprits arises, no doubt, at least partially from the struggle to re-integrate our selves and work to order our desires, passions, thoughts, and speech through action.

We begin to tread the path in footsteps lain heretofore. There is nothing and yet everything controversial about this. We begin to have our restless spirits soothed by the Comforter as we set about to do the labour we discover as knowledge and responsibility increase. The more we do, the more we realize it is God Who is at work, in us, to will and to do. And it is we who work. The more we work, the more we suffer. The older we grow, the more we suffer. The more we suffer, the more we have the opportunity to “offer it up,” as they say, and in so doing, participate in the universal Christian calling St. Paul talked about in the eighth chapter of Romans, especially vv. 13-17.

I started this post after reflecting quite a bit on whether to post a rather lengthy reaction to what amounts to sheer hypocrisy among several online authors, some with whom I generally disagree, and one with whom I generally agree. In the end, I believe prudence dictates that I follow the course of keeping close counsel. I would rather expend my limited time continuing projects I had long ago set out to pursue. So, God willing, more epistemological investigations, more philosophical meanderings, more groundwork, and more cultural explorations are afoot.

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