When our Eliot Chapel was being designed and built almost 100 years ago, one of the scripture passages that was chosen to be inscribed on the building, there on the corner of SW 12th and Salmon, was from the Book of Micah in the Hebrew scripture, “What doth the Lord require of Thee but to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”
To walk humbly with thy God. Those are some of the most quoted words from the Bible and for good reason. A call to do justice, to love mercy and the walk humbly…. Well they offer a good summary of how it is we might live.
Humility is our spiritual theme this month and it has been called the most important of the so-called virtues. The Renaissance humanist Thomas Moore called humility, “that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.”
And there is much that could be said about the virtue of humility. And—that said—I have to admit approaching the topic with some trepidation. Humility is one of those topics where self awareness is perhaps especially important. Preaching about humility should, well, start from a place of humility. Now that’s important for the spiritual life, and certainly for any preacher.
There’s a story from the Jewish tradition. A rabbi raises his hands wildly in prayer. “I’m nobody,” he proclaims fervently. A student sees the prayer and prostrates himself, raises his arms, and cries wildly, “I’m nobody.” A janitor in the temple sees them both, falls on his knees, flails his arms, shouts, “I’m nobody.” The rabbi watches and says to the student, “Who does he think he is?”
So I approach this month’s spiritual theme with care.
Humility is usually thought of as a virtue. And yet I’m struck by how much it can seem out of sync with the messages we get from the larger culture. The need to put ourselves forward, the need to dominate, to get ahead, to make ourselves seen. All we need to do is look at the current news of the world and our own country to see looking at our lives with honesty and some sense of humility do seem a little out of sync.
The word humility, or humble, traces its roots to the Latin humus or ground, also meaning lowly or low. Dictionary definitions include A modest or low view of one’s own importance; freedom from pride or arrogance; it is something we experience in defeat. That we eat humble pie when we need to make an apology. So the definitions don’t exactly point to something we would strive towards.
And, that said, I expect many of us have found ourselves in that humble pie place. Those moments when the universe has offered us a lesson in humility. And I know I have mostly been thankful for those moments in my life. I expect this Covid time has offered that for a lot of us, that we aren’t in charge, that sometimes things get in the way of our best laid plans. Those moments when we are asked to recognize our place in the larger scheme of things and just how interdependent our lives are.
And still humility is a tricky one. I know when I hear anyone talking about being humble can make me raise an inner eyebrow. Sometimes proclaiming our humility is in itself somehow contrary to being humble.
Our board of trustees, as it usually does before their formal meeting each month, this week reflected on the theme of humility and they had some rich observations.
How life events can call us to a place of humility, like when we become parents, or when we somehow don’t succeed the way we thought we would. How we can suddenly be newly aware of our lives being part of something much larger.
How some of the greatest lessons have come when someone reminded us of all we don’t know and that our job is to pay attention and to listen.
How important it is to know what we don’t know as well as what we know.
How important it is to have an equitable view of one’s own importance.
How, our sense of humility might depend on our identities in life. How being a person of color or a woman comes with some expectation of humility, how you really may not have a choice about being otherwise.
How cultural humility, always being open to different views of the world, is so critical right now.
How learning to really listen—to ourselves and to others—is the task of a lifetime, and important when it comes to humility.
That listening part is important. And sometimes it means knowing what humility is, but also what it isn’t. It is easy to want to define humility by what are seen as its opposites—arrogance or hubris or pride. And indeed, those are important things to pay attention to. But sometimes it may be a matter of perspective. Let’s take pride for example. Yes, pride—too much pride—can be seen as the opposite of humility. But as many of us know sometimes pride is necessary to celebrate parts of ourselves that haven’t always been embraced by others or the larger culture. As a gay man, being proud of that part of me has been central in claiming something for myself all through my life.
So it is important that humility not be seen as a cover for keeping those parts of ourselves down or hidden. A sense of humility needs to come out of a place of self-worth and wholeness.
I think humility is actually about taking all the parts of ourselves and embracing them and seeing our individual lives in the context of the whole. It is about knowing the ways we sometimes fall short and also with the ways that we have gifts to share, how we are blessed, how we move out of that place of wholeness. How in that recognition comes strength, not weakness. It is about knowing ourselves for who we are. And out of that recognition of self comes an awareness and appreciation of the wholeness of others. How out of that recognition comes an awareness of how we are invited to see our lives in the larger scheme of things.
Truth is we are all learning all thorough our lives and our job is to look at ourselves honestly and to be open to what it is we still need to learn. It is about knowing and recognizing our growing edges and bringing those edges into our living.
Gandhi said, “I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.”
It may mean living with the awareness that life, over and over again, invites us into that process of learning and of growing. We get lots of opportunities to retrace our steps. We get lots of opportunities to begin again in love.
To the extent research has been done on how it is we cultivate humility, I think it begins in that place of self-awareness. It begins in being able to see ourselves—with all of our gifts and all the ways that we can fall short—to be able to see ourselves from a place of worth and wholeness.[1]
There are times in life when we fail. That doesn’t mean we’re bad people—it means we’re people. When a relationship or a job or whatever it might be doesn’t work out the question is what do with all that.
Some of us—many of us—get messages early on that we aren’t good or whole just as we are. And those messages can be very hard to change, to not have those messages be the ones that dominate. But those voices may be the ones that make us project images of strength or hubris or arrogance that only magnify those messages, that paradoxically call us away from that place of self-awareness and a degree of humility.
And sometimes those can become facades that can be hard to maintain. In fact those facades can come to be how we think of ourselves as being in the world. But sometimes those can lead us to be more and more disconnected from the whole of who we might really be.
Being self-aware is part of a lifelong spiritual task. It is about being aware of our gifts and also all the ways that we can come up short. All the ways that we let ourselves and others down. All the ways that those messages about who we should really be only separate us further from who it is we really are and from the people and communities around us. Coming from the place of wholeness hopefully means we don’t need to prove we are this or that, that we just need to know who we are and that that is a blessing and to live from there.
It’s about realizing all that we don’t know, how we are part of some much much larger mystery and that our task is to see ourselves as part of that, including all the things we will never know, all the ways we still have to learn. Even ways that we are asked to surrender to the mystery.
There’s a paradox somewhere at the heart of this, I think. To embrace who we are and all we are, and at the same time to know all that is beyond us, all that there still is to know, all that we may never know.
I was reminded this week that humility was our theme two years ago—in March of 2020—when the Covid shut down began. And if the last two years has taught us all anything it is perhaps been a reminder of just how we aren’t necessarily in charge and just how interconnected our lives are and how we exist in this much larger context. How it is all pretty humbling when we think about our place in the vast scheme of things.
What are the lessons we’ll take from this time? Some of the suggestions that resonate include:
The first is a call to practice mindfulness and self-compassion. Those have both been linked to greater psychological resilience and emotional well-being. Mindfulness is about making a space to notice our thoughts and our emotions without judgement, all in the service of getting a more accurate picture of ourselves in the world. It’s about having an accurate picture of our gifts and of our limitations—which helps us them to see what might need changing within. That’s about seeing not only the things we’d like to change but the gifts that we bring.
And if we can accept those things we may want to be different to begin doing that. One wise sage has been quoted as saying “If you are in a dark room, don’t beat the darkness with a stick. Rather, turn on the light.” In other words, just gently and patiently replace a negative thought or action with a positive one and over time, we may not even recognize the person we once were. The more we become aware of our inner lives, the easier it is to see what might be limiting us. But to begin by treating ourselves and others with kindness and understanding. I think that might be something we could call a spiritual practice of humility.
And the other advice that seems to come up a lot is about learning to express gratitude. Saying “thank you” means that we recognize the gifts that come into our lives and, as a result, acknowledge the value of other people. Very simply, gratitude can make us less self-focused and more focused on those around us. Gratitude calls us out of ourselves and into greater awareness of the blessings in our lives. In fact, a recent study found that gratitude and humility are mutually reinforcing. How expressing gratitude can induce a greater sense of humility in us and how humility can, in turn, call us to gratitude.[2]
Words again of Wendell Berry:
Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.
Good people, we have lots of opportunities in our time to learn and to grow. We have lots of opportunities to stumble and to fall. We have lots of opportunities to be surprised. We have lots of opportunities to learn how it is we fit into the vast and awful and wonderful and mysterious scheme of things. And my best prediction is that those lessons will continue to come our way in abundance.
May we take up that journey with full hearts. May we make that journey knowing we are not alone. May we make that journey knowing we are part of it all. May we make that journey and in all of our days be glad. Amen.
Prayer.
Spirit of life and of love. There is so much to know. There is so much to learn. There is so much we know. So much we have to bring to the world. May we find our way to share our gifts with the world and in turn see our lives as blessings. May we share our gifts with the world and in turn see our lives as blessed. Amen.
Benediction
in our living, in our being, may love flow freely from us, and in our living and in our being, may love flow freely back to us, in turn.
May we do justice may we love mercy and in all of our day, may we walk humbly with our god.
[1] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/humility_will_make_you_greatest_person_ever
[2] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/humility_will_make_you_greatest_person_ever
Topics: Humility