“Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” To him who lacks sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.”
Ah, Lady Wisdom! How we have neglected you in an age of solipsistic sophistry. Solomon told us to embrace you as a child his mother, as a lover his beloved. But we have tacked you up on a wall like Alfred J Prufrock and covered you with self-congratulatory post-it notes as noxious as love poems tacked on trees in a Shakespearean play.
Your substantial meat and bread of life would sustain us on life’s pilgrimage, and your wine would give us true gladness. But here we are, alternately draining the cups of Venus and Bacchus, while supping on burritos of sawdust wrapped in 20 grit sandpaper. Is it any wonder our heads ache with hunger and hangover, and we have no strength to walk the arduous pilgrims path?