What is humility?
Humility is asserting no personal will, and submitting to the designs of Truth, God.
According to Mary Baker Eddy, "Your mirrored reflection is your own image or likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness move in accord with yours. Now compare man before the mirror to his divine Principle, God. Call the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflection."
What can this metaphor of reflection tell us about humility?
If the original, God, standing before the mirror, declares something powerful and unequivocal like, "I AM THAT I AM" (Ex. 3:14), or " Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away," (Luke 21:33) the image in the mirror is incapable of doing anything else but what the original has done.
God has declared these things. If the original acts with immense power, grace, and self-assurance, the reflection cannot but do the same.
This is humility. God is marvelous, masterful, glorious, unselfish, unhindered. The only thing God lacks is problems. God is successful, fearless, loving, good, moral.
Humility sets aside every human opinion, sense, and accepts without comment, the actions of the original, God.
We are humble because we are so proud of God. And this humility lets us see how incredible, glorious, worthy, and valuable we are.
In the beautiful words of John the Baptist, "He must increase, but I must decrease."
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Ageless Quality
I notice a thought coursing around us that says that people who are older are somehow less important, or just less good, than younger people. I recently heard a friend tell of a performance they did that was "for a bunch of old people but it was still great". The implication was that, for some reason, performing for older people is somehow not as worthwhile as performing for younger people.
Frankly, it seems like a thought that has established itself pretty firmly in the assumptions of popular culture. Maybe it's because popular culture is aimed at younger audiences.
In any case, it's wrong. Not just wrong in that it's rude, but it's also wrong in that it's incorrect.
It is very beautiful for me to remember and feel that everyone is timeless. When I am standing in front of an audience that ranges in age from 11 to 100, I am touched, again and again, by the fact of the equality of all the folks in the room. Each one is there as a creation of an eternal God. And when I think of why we are all there – to imbibe and interact with holy spiritual concepts – I see more and more that when someone is opening, moving, striving to learn and grow, they are entirely alive. They are ageless and wondrous.
An artist, a musician, a story-teller seeks to touch the hearts of an audience – seeks to reveal the color and wonder of life to the group of hearts standing before him. To that artist it is nothing but a burden to see age. Seeing age divides and materializes our vision of the world. Instead, it is amazing to throw off the veil and see that the music, the ideas, the color of life itself, is doing the work of reaching those hearts. The substance of each one is ageless, interested, agile.
The basic burden of age is the belief that one can no longer learn, change, grow, or be useful. But a heart that is open, striving, interested, and engaged, is ageless.
We all can only prove and demonstrate our alive-ness, our value, our worth, by living! By bringing out the ideas, the dreams, the inspirations that come to us as we keep our minds open, agile, fruitful.
Older folks don’t need to buy into this materialistic notion, and neither do younger people need to be fooled into thinking they are somehow better. Spiritually, (meaning, really) people are absolutely EQUAL. We are timeless ideas, each with an amazing character to be revealed further and further.
Frankly, it seems like a thought that has established itself pretty firmly in the assumptions of popular culture. Maybe it's because popular culture is aimed at younger audiences.
In any case, it's wrong. Not just wrong in that it's rude, but it's also wrong in that it's incorrect.
It is very beautiful for me to remember and feel that everyone is timeless. When I am standing in front of an audience that ranges in age from 11 to 100, I am touched, again and again, by the fact of the equality of all the folks in the room. Each one is there as a creation of an eternal God. And when I think of why we are all there – to imbibe and interact with holy spiritual concepts – I see more and more that when someone is opening, moving, striving to learn and grow, they are entirely alive. They are ageless and wondrous.
An artist, a musician, a story-teller seeks to touch the hearts of an audience – seeks to reveal the color and wonder of life to the group of hearts standing before him. To that artist it is nothing but a burden to see age. Seeing age divides and materializes our vision of the world. Instead, it is amazing to throw off the veil and see that the music, the ideas, the color of life itself, is doing the work of reaching those hearts. The substance of each one is ageless, interested, agile.
The basic burden of age is the belief that one can no longer learn, change, grow, or be useful. But a heart that is open, striving, interested, and engaged, is ageless.
We all can only prove and demonstrate our alive-ness, our value, our worth, by living! By bringing out the ideas, the dreams, the inspirations that come to us as we keep our minds open, agile, fruitful.
Older folks don’t need to buy into this materialistic notion, and neither do younger people need to be fooled into thinking they are somehow better. Spiritually, (meaning, really) people are absolutely EQUAL. We are timeless ideas, each with an amazing character to be revealed further and further.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
How To Go On A Good Walk
Going for a good walk is one of my favorite things. In fact, I would say that I'm pretty darn good at it. Yep. That’s a resume booster alright.
I love walks because, for me, they are more than a little exercise – they are an opportunity to see differently. It is a time to take myself out of mundane things, and instead, just look. Look for beauty. Look for wonder. Look for any little trail of crumbs and follow it. I find that when I do that, almost always, there is a story that unfolds.
Try one, or some, of these ideas next time you go for a walk.
1) Actively look for beauty, mystery, delight.
2) Don't plan where you are going to go, and don't go somewhere you always go.
3) Listen to your intuition when you are deciding which way to turn. Decide with your feeling instead of logic or reason.
4) Pick up something you like and carry it in your hand
5) Entertain the idea that you might have an interesting interaction with another being while you are on this walk. (Person? Dog? Snail?)
6) Stop and look at things
7) Make up a little song that you can sing while you walk (don't be embarrassed!)
8) Look at your neighborhood as if you were a visitor and had never been there before.
9) Let the route you follow be guided by what you find interesting. Go exactly to the things you find most engaging.
10) Look for things you didn’t know about wherever you are.
Here are a few more for the really committed wonder-walker:
11) Jump over at least one fence
12) Find a way to be in more than one type of space – cross a boundary of some kind. (commercial/residential/rural/woods/train tracks/behind the mall/inside an office building/beach/fancy neighborhood/poor neighborhood/in a crowd/solitary, etc.)
13) Make something out of things that you find on your walk
14) Choose a place you know of, but don’t know how to get to. Walk there without consulting a map.
15) Find a secret passage (They exist.) and follow it.
16) Get yourself lost, and then, get yourself un-lost.
There are a million soul-stirring adventures that can begin the moment you step out the door.
Let me know what you find!
I love walks because, for me, they are more than a little exercise – they are an opportunity to see differently. It is a time to take myself out of mundane things, and instead, just look. Look for beauty. Look for wonder. Look for any little trail of crumbs and follow it. I find that when I do that, almost always, there is a story that unfolds.
Try one, or some, of these ideas next time you go for a walk.
1) Actively look for beauty, mystery, delight.
2) Don't plan where you are going to go, and don't go somewhere you always go.
3) Listen to your intuition when you are deciding which way to turn. Decide with your feeling instead of logic or reason.
4) Pick up something you like and carry it in your hand
5) Entertain the idea that you might have an interesting interaction with another being while you are on this walk. (Person? Dog? Snail?)
6) Stop and look at things
7) Make up a little song that you can sing while you walk (don't be embarrassed!)
8) Look at your neighborhood as if you were a visitor and had never been there before.
9) Let the route you follow be guided by what you find interesting. Go exactly to the things you find most engaging.
10) Look for things you didn’t know about wherever you are.
Here are a few more for the really committed wonder-walker:
11) Jump over at least one fence
12) Find a way to be in more than one type of space – cross a boundary of some kind. (commercial/residential/rural/woods/train tracks/behind the mall/inside an office building/beach/fancy neighborhood/poor neighborhood/in a crowd/solitary, etc.)
13) Make something out of things that you find on your walk
14) Choose a place you know of, but don’t know how to get to. Walk there without consulting a map.
15) Find a secret passage (They exist.) and follow it.
16) Get yourself lost, and then, get yourself un-lost.
There are a million soul-stirring adventures that can begin the moment you step out the door.
Let me know what you find!
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