A reading from the book of Wisdom.

And so I prayed, and understanding was given to me;
I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me.

I esteemed Her more than scepters and thrones;
compared with Her, I held riches as nothing.
I reckoned no priceless stone to be her peer,
for compared with Her, all gold is a pinch of sand,
and next to Her, silver is nothing but mud.

I loved her more than health or beauty,
preferred Her to the light,
since Her radiance never sleeps.

In Her company all good things came to me;
at Her hands were riches unnumbered.

The Word of God recorded in the book of Wisdom.

There is in each of us an ocean
full of secrets strange and luminous,
an ocean with depths we do not understand,
with dark we often fear,
a place almost impossible to visit
and yet it moves with us
everywhere we go,
informs every conversation,
underlies every thought.
There is treasure there,
but it belongs to the depths
the way the heart
belongs to the body.
Everything depends on this.
Lately, I’m learning to think of treasure
only as a verb,
not as a thing to be taken.
I’m learning that to live
is to be an ocean.