“Keep us, we pray, from thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, and ready at all times to step aside for others, that the cause of Christ may be advanced.” These are words from a prayer I ran across several weeks ago. It started me thinking about the relationship between what the Church has always called the Virtue of humility and how humility relates to pride, self-esteem, and how we relate to others.
For those of us who recognize the church season of Lent, we probably know that this forty day observance we are in began with the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Ash Wednesday is a day to remember our mortality. This is the same mortality we share with Jesus, son of Mary who was born as we were born — who walked the roads of Galilee in the same way we walk the roads of Montezuma County. During Lent we remember that we share a common origin with Jesus and all other sons and daughters of God, and it is a humble origin.
Humility was once a highly regarded virtue. Etymologically, “humble/humility” comes from the word “lowly.” It shares its root with the word “humus,” the dirt that is fertile and life-giving. You and I are creatures of this Earth ... formed of the same molecules that make up everything else that surrounds us, including the Earth itself.
We live in an era and a culture that no longer supports practices that encourage humility. We are too worried about “poor self-esteem.” We work to stave it off at every turn. Our dominant language urges us toward seeing ourselves in an ever better light. Sadly we seem to gauge what is better only in relationship to those we deem “less than.”
Even in the church we often talk about and plan for “outreach” when in fact what we may do is “down-reach” — a paternalistic taking care of “those” poor people. What would it take for us not to “take care of” folks who have very real needs, but simply (humbly) to share what we have? How can we learn and know that we are sufficient just the way we are and to give out of that certainty?
It goes without saying that, by the world’s standards, we in this country are a privileged lot. And who among us would choose to move from our places of relative wealth, educational superiority, or ability to be heard so that “those” people could share in what we have? Would we not rather take care of “them?”
Creating a society built on God’s justice is all that will ever reduce the need for charity. It is incumbent upon us who know of God’s justice through Jesus to remember what that looks like. Jesus did not show us a world built on a tit-for-tat formula. He did not give us an image of a world in which good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Jesus certainly did not paint a picture for us in which the scales of justice tip upwards for those who live “proper” lives, those who are part of the “in” crowd, those with money or position or power.
Jesus showed us a world in which the poor, the marginalized, the “other” are beloved of God and on whose behalf the scales of God’s justice are weighted. When we stretch out our hand toward them, how far down — really — do we reach? Jesus challenges us to loosen our grip on the high place accorded us at the world’s socio-political-economic table — a place we have by virtue of the sheer luck of where we were born. He challenges us to ask what it is that keeps us distant from our sisters and brothers. Could it be our nagging need to prop up our own self-image — to assure ourselves that we really are worthwhile — that we matter?
Maybe if we were to give ourselves to some practice that took us alongside our sisters and brothers who are living in poverty, we might stop worrying so much about our self-esteem. We could do that right here in Cortez. Maybe if we were to serve and then eat alongside patrons at Grace’s Kitchen or Hope’s Kitchen we might learn as much about our common humanity as we’d learn about theirs. Maybe if we were to wash bedding for the residents at the Bridge and then sit and visit with them for an evening we might begin to see that we really are all one — that we all share the same hopes and aspirations.
Maybe as we connected with those we’ve pitied or thought needed us, we would find we’ve needed them. Through an experience of our common humanity we might let go of our fear of not having value ... of not mattering. We might learn that in God’s economy value is measured by a different standard than the world’s.
The Virtue of humility can give us tools we need to stop our striving ... to stop our need to look down on others to build ourselves up. When we recognize that we all are made from the same dust that began in the furnaces that are the stars of our universe, humility starts to sound not so bad.
This Lent remember that you are dust. With all your fellow specks of humus inhabiting this planet, remember that you hold a unique place in the created order — no more or less than any other. To the extent we practice this truth by living in mutuality with all others, the “cause of Christ” that was mentioned in the opening prayer will become visible. The Bible calls it the Kingdom of God.
Leigh Waggoner is priest at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. She can be reached at 565-7865, or rector@stbarnabascortez.org.
