Sirach 37:23-26. Sirach discusses some of the gifts of wisdom. "A wise man will instruct his own people, and the fruits of his understanding will be trustworthy. A wise man will have praise heaped upon him, and all who see him will call him happy." The life of a man is limited in its days, but Israel's days are without number. The wise man will like will instruct in confidence will live in confidence, and his name will live forever.

A few things, first, maybe I am not as wise as I think I am, since I am having tremendous trouble instructing my own people! I am finding that, although I trusted God and the instincts and wisdom that he has given me, and these turned out to be correct (not surprisingly!), I still am thought of as a crazy conspiracy theorist by most of my loved ones. And when I try to share my "wisdom" I am yelled at or spoken down to and told to stop talking.

This reaction from people I know and love is what makes me realize we are in a different place, our times are not just part of the endless cycle of the rise and fall of ideologies and good and evil. We are in uncharted territory. Good people, people who are trying to be holy, have closed their eyes and their ears to hearing anything that might counter the lies they are being told. They lash out, they treat their fellow man terribly. When wisdom is not treated with respect, but with angry dismissal, that is a sign of the devil at work.

Secondly, right in the middle of this Sirach talks about a man's days being numbered but not so Israel's days. And a wise man's name will be remembered forever. This gives hope to those of us who keep trying to speak truth. Our own lives are limited, we may get no traction in our own time, we may just have to suffer through this time of others sleep-walking though reality, but the truth, like Israel, lives forever. One day it, at least, will be vindicated. And then maybe, just maybe, someone will remember that one of us said it when it was unpopular and when we suffered for it.