A couple of weeks ago, Connie and I drove over to Pleasant Hill.

We stopped by a Denny's for a quick lunch.

And just after we placed our order, a man in a suit and tie came over to our table.

He knelt down beside our table and gave us a piece of paper.

"Denny's is taking a survey," he said. "We’d really appreciate if it you’d fill this out."

It was a brief questionnaire about the food, the service, the cleanliness of the restaurant, those kinds of things. I’d seen these before. This was the first time someone handed it to us, in person.

He was a friendly man, and we joked around with him.

Later, while we were eating, he came back to our table and handed us a card.

It was a Denny's V.I.P. card – great big red letters across the top, V.I.P. – authorizing for us, a free meal.

"I want you all to have a meal on us," he said.

It turned out that he was a senior executive in the Denny's corporation, doing an inspection of his restaurants.

That’s when we noticed what good service we were getting.

The waiters filled up our ice tea glasses often.

They came around every couple of minutes asking if the food was all right.

We were back in Pleasant Hill this last week, and decided to use our V.I.P. card.

I showed it to the waitress and asked if I was to show that now, or at the cashier stand.

Her eyes got this big around. "Yes, sir," she said. "Which every you would like."

Again, we couldn’t have asked for better service.

Our ice tea glasses never got below half full.

Every couple of minutes, "Is every thing all right?"

Two gentlemen were standing at the cashier register when we were leaving, and I handed them my V.I.P. card.

It caught both of them off guard; one of them gasped; it was like they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Very seriously, they figured our deduction, both of them, double-checked it, and carefully gave me the exact change.

Then suddenly, one of them relaxed and laughed out loud, and pointed to me.

"Hey, I remember you," he said. "You were in here last week. You’re just a customer." I was demoted, right there on the spot. Just a customer!

For a while, there, we were in a special class of people, and Connie and I joked about wishing we’d printed up several of those cards.

        It’s human nature to make quick assumptions about the people we meet.

And we react to each other based on our quick assumptions.

A person’s inner nature is generally hidden.

We really don’t know who we are meeting.

We don’t know if they are wise or foolish.

We don’t know, whether friendly or adverse, what kind of influence they hold for our lives.

       There is a story that comes out of the Middle East.

It is about a man in search for the wisest person alive.

He wanted to find the best teacher who could tell him the secrets of life.

He consulted oracles and priests … where can I find the wisest person alive?

By reputation, he found an old man, a seer, living high in the mountains.

He made the journey up the mountain and told the seer of his quest. "I want to find the wisest person alive?"

The seer sat in silence for a long moment, then said, "the wisest person alive lives in a small village, down below."

The seer told the seeker the name of the village, and the name of the person, and the exact address, where he lived.

Immediately, the seeker left and went down the mountain to find the wisest person alive.

He found a small boy, tending a flock of sheep. Maybe about nine years old.

And he was a mischievous little boy, doing all kinds of foolish things.

How could he be the wisest person alive?

So the seeker went back up the mountain to protest.

The seer told him … he is indeed the wisest person alive.

But his wisdom is still in formation, and won’t develop until he is a very old man.

So when we meet someone, we don’t even know where they are in realizing their own potential – and what that may mean to us, at some future date.

How so strangely true, the words of William Wordsworth: "The child is the father of the man."

Destiny can so bend time. Were do we find "Wisdom?"

         If you were to think back over your live, who have you known that is wise?

Or as a guided imagery exercise… if you could have an imaginary "meditative council," a group of nine wise people who you have known in your life time, sit around a bench in a courtroom, and you could enter this room at any time to ask questions and receive their wisdom … who would you want on your meditative council?"

This summer, we had company from out of town.

And while at Mendocino, we drove up to Pacific Grove to collect sea-glass on "Glass Beach."

It was one of those beautiful California days, warm sun and gentle surf.

When we arrived, there was what looked like a homeless man.

Dressed in rags. A gray beard. He was over by the trashcan, moving it around.

We didn’t trust him, and we made sure that our van was locked up, and all the purses where hidden, out of sight.

When we came back to the van, this man had backed his car in to where the trashcan was, and spread out his wears.

He had collected sea-glass from Glass Beach, and made jewelry out of it.

And of course, where there is jewelry on display, we had to stop.

He turned out to be a retired Admiral from the Navy.

As I remember, he commanded a huge ship of his own.

He is a single man, with children in college … he chose to spend a relaxing retirement, enjoying life and combing beaches.

And he turned out to be deeply religious.

While he didn’t have these on display, when he found out that I was a minister and what Northbrae stood for, he shared this with me [hold up medallion].

It has a cross for Christianity, imbedded in the Star of David for Judaism, with the Crescent Moon and Star for Islam, and the Sanskrit letter for Om representing Hinduism, all in a circle representing Buddhism, and for me, the Native American Medicine Wheel.

On the back is engraved the word, "UNITY."

He said that he has been in ports all over the world, that he has studied all these religions, and that his mission in life is this word, "UNITY."

We affectionately call him, the "Prophet at the Beach."

We would have never met him, if we hadn’t pushed past our prejudices.

It causes me to ponder … how much wisdom do we miss, by acting on snap judgments and not taking the time to know people?

How do we know a wise person if we meet one? What are the signs? What gives it away?

The book of James talks about the subtle nature of wisdom. Two kinds:

(1) Wisdom born from above, and (2) wisdom grown from below.

Wisdom from below is about survival. And such wisdom can become very crafty.

As wise and full of understanding that it may be, James tells us that this kind of wisdom is filled with envy and selfishness and boastfulness.

Eventually, according to James, disorder spins out of such wisdom.

Wisdom born from above is pure. Yielding. Peaceable. Merciful. Forgiving.

Wisdom from above sometimes can run counter to wisdom from below, and challenge our feeling for "common sense."

But according to James, it is this wisdom that spawns good works.

Wisdom from above comes from "Hoop Awareness." It all depends on how big is our hoop.

In Kansas City, we shared our yard with a group of Indians who laid out a Medicine Wheel.

A circle of rocks, representing a hoop, marked off in four directions.

East represents beginnings. West, endings. South, the full fruition of maturity, and North, the mystical realm where seeds sleep beneath the snow and everything incubates.

The blue road from East to West represents a lifetime, birth to death. The red road from South to North, our spiritual path. And the center, where we are here and now.

It’s good medicine, they shared with me, to stand with full awareness in the medicine wheel. It puts life in perspective.

I often would go out at night and stand alone, under the stars, in the middle of that hoop.

And indeed, the wisdom of the hoop, the medicine of the wheel, can stir within us.

The world is a hoop, from horizon to horizon, all around us. Wherever we are, we are in the center of our hoop. For some, it is a large hoop. For some, small.

Our capacity to love, and our capacity to absorb wisdom from above, is no bigger than our hoop.

We can be like a clam that sees only to the rim of its own shell.

Or like a crab in a beautiful and colorful reef, seeing only black and white.

Our like a Lotus flower, an Eastern symbol for an ever widening hoop, a symbol of spiritual growth through the four worlds.

A lotus plant, in a pond, has its feet in the mud, the earth.

It lifts up its stem through the water.

And it opens its flower in the air, with its face to the sun.

The principle: If we are wrapped up in ourselves, we are blind to the wisdom from above.

If we widen our hoop, the "self" dissolves into a bigger picture.

Personal issues are still important, but they are felt in a larger context.

        Last Tuesday evening, I was here at the church for Tai Chi.

We had rented out our Haver Hall, so I went over early to open up the hut.

There was a man in our parking lot, talking to himself.

Cars were pulling in. People were coming into our church for meetings.

And this man was pacing back and forth, talking to himself.

Raising his voice. Shaking his fist in the air. Yelling.

I thought for a moment that he might be on a cell phone. One of these remote "Blue Tooth" devices.

But he had no ear-piece. He was just shouting into the air.

Then I thought that he must be mentally disturbed. And I pondered what I should be doing about it.

I kept an eye on him, for several minutes. Suddenly, he stopped, and started into Haver Hall.

Then it dawned on me. Haver Hall was rented to a group auditioning for a stage play, and this man was outside rehearsing his lines before his audition.

        How so quick we are to form judgments about other people.