Wise Council

In the book, "Porch Talk" by Phillip Gully it talks about the shift in the way our culture seeks out advice and wisdom. It made me really think how much we don't take advantage of the wisdom of our elders. The chapter begins with the employing of paid life coaches and counselors now a days....
"Since I spoke to my pastor friend about hiring a life coach, I've met a number of folks who've employed them. I'm not sure how this trend developed, but suspect it has something to do with the decline of the neighborhood sage. When I was a kid, every block had at least one. It was generally an old man or woman. The man could be found in a back corner of his garage, building birdhouses or applying varnish to a wooden screen door. The woman could be found on a front porch, shelling peas or doing needlework. But they were always plentiful and willing to offer all sorts of counsel, bidden or unbidden.
Now we've been taught to fear those people, to not speak to strangers, to look for sinister motives where none exist. So we're filling this wisdom vacancy in other ways, turning to life coaches, television, therapists, movie-star preachers, and radio commentators, when the prophets are just down the street. In my childhood, it was Doc Gibbs and Mrs. Harvey, both of whom oozed sound judgment from every pore.
That wisdom hasn't gone anywhere. In a culture that prizes glitz, celebrity, and youthfulness, we've forgotten where to find it. But whenever I spend an hour with anyone over eighty I come away impressed by their level-headedness and embarrassed by my lack of it. Some of us life coaches are pale pretenders, tooting our horns, while the real teachers sit quietly in their corners, waiting for an audience that never arrives."