Lent: Day Eleven

If I have been following through with all that I said I could do to enact humility, then I have spent the last week-and-a-half saying and doing things in a humble way. At the very least, I have been more humble than I had been when I started. The seventh step toward humility reminds me, however, that I can’t let my humility remain at the level of mere words, or even mere action, but I have to begin to take on humility in my very being.

St. Benedict’s take on it sounds rather extreme and harsh than many of us would probably feel comfortable with. He says:

The seventh degree of humility is when he not only declares humility with his tongue, but also in his inmost soul believes that he is the lowest and vilest of men, humbling himself and saying along with the Prophet: "But I am a worm and no man, the reproach of men and the outcast of the people" (Ps. 22:7). "I have been exalted and humbled and confounded" (Ps. 88:16). And also: "It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me, that I may learn Thy commandments" (Ps. 119:71, 73).

If St. Benedict sounds too harsh for you, you’re in good company. I think it does us all good to remember that St. Benedict isn’t talking to the average Christian, but to the one who has taken on the life of extreme faith through monastic life. Even with that in mind, his views seemed to be too extreme even for many of his monks. It is said that some of his monks couldn’t take the austerity of his rule, so they tried to poison him. St. Benedict was saved from the attempted murder when he made the sign of the cross over the cup he was about to drink and it shattered, spilling the poisoned drink and saving his life.

I get where he is coming from, and see the truth in what he is saying, even if I don’t really like how he says it. So for me, this rung of humility is something like:

DON’T JUST SAY AND DO THINGS THAT SEEM HUMBLE. START ACTUALLY “BEING” HUMBLE!

If you have been following along, you will remember that I have already made the case of doing first and feeling later. My believe is that we don’t feel our way into doing, but we do our way into feeling. I can’t wait to feel loving before I start behaving in a loving way, or I will never behave in a loving way, or it will be sporadic and focused on a very narrow set of people. I have to decide what “being loving” looks like and do it, and if I continue to do that, I will begin to feel loving�"and even if I don’t feel it, simply by being in the habit of doing it, I BECOME loving, whether I feel like it or not. It becomes a part of who I am.

This is what I have been doing this Lent�"I have been doing humility. I have decided for myself what humility is (I haven’t decided what humility is for anyone else, just for myself. If my understanding works for you, then great; if it doesn’t, then great; if some of it works, use what works and leave the rest), then I decided what humility looks like in action. Already I have come up with thirty-five or so actions or statements or behaviors that to me demonstrate what humility looks like in action, and then I set out to do those things each day, adding the new items to the previous ones as I go. Now if I have been diligent in doing these things, then I will move to a point where I am no longer acting humble, I am humble.

What we do affects what we feel. We change our insides by how we behave. So if I behave in a way that is humble, and I have made that behavior part of how I live my life, then if will change my feelings and thoughts and my emotions to become humble. Humility is no longer something I do, it is something I am. And when humility is something I am, I don’t have to think about doing it any more, it is just a part of who I am. I AM humble.

And in the little over a week since I started, I can already sense a process of change. I am having more humble thoughts. I am being more honest about who I am. I can see how in the grand scheme of things, I seem to hold very little importance. Others can teach my classes, and may even be better at it. Others can write blogs and sermons and preach, and may even do it better, or clearer. When I was in high school, I had a hard time imaging that the school would go one once I graduated. It has been going on for nearly thirty years just fine without me�"possibly even better without me interrupting teachers and seeking attention. And, I think, many of us fee that way about life. I can think that life in general, or the world in particular, needs me in it to go on. But life will go on without. The world existed long before I came along, and will exist long after I’m gone. That idea can hurt my ego, and even threaten my existence and sense of well-being if my ego is all I have.

So hopefully I am more humble now, and I believe that if I keep doing what I have been doing, I will be humble�"not just behave in a more humble manner, not just say things that sound humble, but actually become humble.

So some of the things I can do as I include this phase of humility into my life and discipline are:

1) REMIND MYSELF THAT I AM NOT THAT IMPORTANT. This isn’t a denigration of myself, but an honest appraisal that with the exception of a small group of people, my existence really doesn’t matter. Most people will find their life unaffected when I cease to be among the living.

2) DON’T WORRY. If I am not that important, then it really doesn’t matter to anyone but me whether I succeed or fail. My failures won’t be remembered, so even if I end up a miserable failure, who’s really going to know? All my worries will be gone the instant I die. So why fill my life with worries that I create and that have no life of their own apart from me?

3) WRITE MY OWN EPITAPH, or write how I want to be remembered and make that my mission statement for how I live my life.

Feel free to add others