The only light in the one-room house was a tiny flame that bounced on a kerosene wick lamp. 

The door and windows were shut against the night.

The cook fire in the far corner sent a slow thread of smoke up to the thatched roof, where it broke into countless fingers, each probing a way to escape.

The 13 men seated along the walls were smoking their usual blend of tobacco and guava leaves.  I closed my burning eyes and relied on my ears to tell me who was speaking.

These were the nankedakay, “the old men,” the elders, gathered to “level out” a dispute in the community. I was included, they joked as the potent cup of rice beer made its rounds, because I had “the forehead of an old man.”

They needed no light. Most of them were barely literate, and besides, the local brand of justice required no documents.  The facts of the case were known to everyone in this village of 35 houses.  Everyone knew precedent cases.  And the record of their decision would be stored in the remarkable memories of the participants.

The owner of the house where we were gathered had died the week before and, by tradition, all his property – rice paddies, coffee groves, banana patches and animals, if any – was to be divided equally among his three children.  But the younger son protested.  He had cared for their father during his final months, he said, and besides (he added in quiet tones to the elders), he had raised the pig that fed the guests at their father’s funeral.

I witnessed cases that took so long for consensus that the elders had to send out for another jar of rice beer.  This one did not.  The elders awarded the younger son a small paddy down by the river that otherwise would have gone to his sister – who, the elders noted, had only seldom visited her father during his illness. The sibling disagreement was over.

This incident took place 54 years ago in the Philippines.  As a young missionary linguist describing this mountain language, I was specially privileged:  I observed Wisdom in all her glory.

Wisdom has been much on my mind lately.  Maybe it’s like money:  you don’t think about it until there isn’t any.

The elders in my Philippine village had the ability to draw broad lessons from a deep well of life experience.  Together, they applied an informed common sense, for the benefit of their community.

Their kind of wise leadership is not welcome among us today.  Our leaders have developed a value system that shuts out wisdom – a horribly virulent strain of greed for power and more power.  Wisdom cannot breathe that kind of selfish air.

America has known wise leadership.  Abraham Lincoln knew that Reconstruction had to be a national healing.  FDR gave security to the common man.  They saw a long view beyond their immediate problems.   

I wonder if Trump supporters weren’t looking for this kind of leadership in 2016 – someone they could trust to shake things up for the better.  If so, they didn’t get it.  To him, collective wisdom is a wimp.  He’s guided by his gut, his daily whims.  He has no long vision, only the four month until November’s elections.  The Washington swamp is now a cesspool of crony criminals.  Everything he does – and I repeat, everything – is to enhance his own position, especially with his faithful.      

And I will declare ditto for the arrogant, gerrymandered Republicans in Raleigh.

We will soon be looking for new leadership.  Our next president must be wise.  He or she must not pander to the short-term selfishness of our time.  They should talk of long-term – no, eternal – principle.

I notice Democrats looking for charisma.  How often does glamor and wisdom coexist in a person? 

Two of our wisest presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman, succeeded to the office by a president’s death, not by election. 

I pray for somebody who will beat Trump – but not just anybody.

Is there wisdom in what I say here?  You judge.

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Lee Ballard lives in Mars Hill.  For more “stuff Ballard wrote,” visit mountainsnail.com.”