The Tao of Pooh

How is it that we came to characterize the owl as a wise old bird? I think we have been misled by appearances. Those gray tufts in his brow give the impression of age (which we associate with wisdom). But above all I suspect it is the haughty disapproval of his stare, the apparent skepticism with which he views us.

But is skepticism wisdom? Like many people in my generation, I grew up reading Winnie-the-Pooh, and sometimes I wonder if my world view may not be slightly warped as a result. Certainly one of the messages A.A. Milne left his readers was that it is wise to be skeptical.

Pooh, of course, is a delightful character -- not especially bright, but charmingly earnest and self-effacing. And Christopher Robin, with his wisdom and thoughtfulness, his willingness to come to the rescue, and most especially his genuine love for Pooh, has some very God-like qualities.

But the rest of the animals in the forest are quite obviously flawed and often rather self-absorbed. Piglet has a serious Napoleon complex; Eeyore is a relentlessly negative martyr; Rabbit is terribly officious and fussy; and OWL, who is supposed to be so wise, is pretty out of touch with reality.

Looking back on it now, it seems to me that the Pooh tales serve as a gentle reminder that it may never be a great idea to assume that someone else has all the answers. In fact, if we listen to Milne and learn to love Pooh as he did, I think we also come to realize that true wisdom has a gentleness to it that looks a lot like love, which, as it says in I Corinthians 13 (that passage that so often appears in wedding ceremonies) "is patient, is kind, envieth not, vaunteth not itself, and is not puffed up."

Last night I watched "What Would Jesus Buy," a sort of bizarre documentary about the relentless consumerism of Christmas, done by the man who did Supersize Me. The film is a cross between David Byrne's True Stories, Monty Python, and Supersize Me, and its characters -- especially "Reverend Billy" of the "Church of Stop Shopping" with his visions of the "Shopocalypse" -- are pretty strange. But the messages are sound and clear, and I felt -- as we used to say in the radical evangelical church I belonged to briefly in my late 20's -- "convicted:" which is to say, guilty as charged.

I spent some time this morning in meditation this morning getting caught up in those feelings of guilt: I don't always buy local goods, nor do I pay enough attention to where things are made; I did actually darken the door of Walmart a time or two; I am despite my efforts more of a consumer than a producer; I do own too many pairs of shoes.

But I think true wisdom would be to accept that the temptations are always there and to work tenderly with that; to continue to love myself in spite of that; to gently probe the empty spots that prompt gratuitous shopping and to work consciously to find a more loving way to fill those holes.

And God, to me, with all her wise awareness of my flaws, looks less like Owl, with his fierce disapproval, and more like Christopher Robin, whose voice I can still hear saying, at the end of the record I had of "Winnie the Pooh and the Heffalump",

"Oh, Bear, how I do love you!"

"Heh, Heh," said Pooh. "So do I... So do I."