We recently went to an orchard and picked apples. I went knowing that I wanted a slightly tart variety I could bake with. I settled on golden blush apples, and once I’d baked a delicious galette with them, I shared it with a few friends.

I was reminded of my spiritual director’s distinction between information, intelligence, and wisdom. Information is knowing that there are apples. Intelligence is knowing how to take apples and bake something with them. Wisdom is knowing to take what I’ve baked to a neighbor who is grieving. Or a friend who needs cheering up. Wisdom is knowing how to take all the information and intelligence at my disposal and use it to live deeply and well.

Information is coming at us all the time. We hear news about our friendship circles, occurrences in the world, scientific discoveries, historical events, or the stock market. Intelligence is knowing which information is useful to us and which information we don’t need—understanding what to do with the information we receive.

With apples, it’s easy. If I want tart baking apples, I can ignore all the rows of other varieties that don’t suit my needs. I can take the right apples for my purposes and turn them into something more. I can intelligently create something with the information at my disposal.

Wisdom, though, is understanding how my values intersect with what I’m able to do. Wisdom is understanding what to do with what I create. Wisdom is that part that connects me to something outside of myself. Maybe wisdom is the why that undergirds my actions.

We continue to receive information about violence in the world. Maybe we learn information that some people close to us are more directly connected to that violence than we are. Or maybe we learn information about the history of that violence that informs how we feel about it.

Sometimes we receive information that is so beyond us that our intelligence fails us. We can analyze situations. We can lay blame. We can conclude in our own minds what other people should do. We can argue with people who have analyzed and blamed and concluded differently from us.

But in some situations, none of that is really useful. We aren’t able to create anything meaningful from the information we have. My ability to reason and rationalize might invite me into a smug sense of superiority, but what does it gain me to be “right” if there’s nothing meaningful for me to do?

Then again, sometimes wisdom doesn’t require us to do anything. Sometimes living deeply and well, in alignment with our deepest values, is more about bearing witness to and being present with grief and pain in the world around us. In the people around us.

Maybe what we create out of our wisdom is less about analysis or blame, and more about our response to grief and pain through the filter of our life-affirming values. It’s the part where I realize that I don’t really know how to bake anything with the apples I have, but I decide to go and visit my grieving neighbor anyway.

In what spaces are you inviting wisdom? How are you living deeply and well from the source of your deepest values? How might you bear witness to and be present with pain or grief that is beyond your ability to fix or resolve? And what do we need from one another in the process?