Posts Tagged ‘Humility’
Inevitable Little Sins – Br. Lain Wilson
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Br. Lain Wilson
Today’s Gospel lesson at first glance seems straightforward: you get what you give, Scripture’s guidance is clear, therefore you should change your ways. What more do you need? I for sure don’t feel myself to be living a life like the rich man, so I guess I’m doing okay?
But when I look at the shape of my life, when I examine my own actions and inactions, my thoughts and feelings and attitudes and prejudices, I find myself, inevitably and endlessly, falling short of the mark. I may not be the rich man lording my wealth and status over poor Lazarus, but I’m not innocent. Read More
Genuine Humility – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Many years ago, my confessor gave me a tough homework assignment. My assignment was to get over myself. To get over myself and pray with the last line from our Gospel passage tonight, where Jesus tells us, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
My homework assignment came after I had spent a long time waxing poetically with my confessor about my sins, my shortcomings, all the mistakes I had made in the past, and so on. My confessor looked me in the eye and asked if I thought that God wanted me to think about myself as much as I did, especially my past. I must admit I was tongue tied in my response.
I’ve always been grateful for that homework assignment because it led to years of me praying about humility. What I’ve come to learn in my time as a monk and in especially with getting to meet so many people here, is that genuine humility is not what I thought it was. Read More
The Hard-Earned Humility of George Herbert – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
George Herbert
Ecclesiastes 4:13-5:7
In the calendar of the church, we remember today George Herbert, a 17th-century English parson and poet. How Herbert’s life ended is not how it began. In the beginning, his family’s tremendous wealth and privilege, his keen mind, his excellent education,[1] his charismatic oratorical skills, his internal drive to be fabulous, brought Herbert to the top of the heap. By age 30, he was counselor to two kings and a member of Parliament. He had gained the whole world but forfeited his soul.[2] Two things happened, two breakdowns which became breakthroughs. Read More
Humble Blessings – Br. Lain Wilson
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Br. Lain Wilson
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)
I often struggle to pray.
This may be a strange admission from a monk. I am so rich in so many ways: responsibilities, relationships, interests. I am rich in so many ways, and I feel my poverty distinctly when I am invited to set all of that aside and be with God in prayer. I feel the poverty of my own divided attention, of competing goods pressing in on me, of fears and anxieties for myself and for the world.
Above all, I feel the poverty imposed on me by my own expectations: that I need to meet God in a certain way, in “correct” language, showing only my best self, as if God didn’t know everything already.
I often struggle to pray – and in that struggle, I have become acutely aware of Jesus’ words to those who are “poor in spirit.” Read More
When in Doubt, Be Humble – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Tonight we heard Jesus say to the chief priests and elders “Truly, I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” Ouch. How do you come back from that? Those are humbling words.
One rule I follow in praying with scripture is, no matter what the context, I try to imagine Jesus speaking his words to me personally. I try to imagine Jesus’ tone and words matching what someone close to me would say to me today. So for tonight’s passage, I imagine Jesus looking me in the eye and saying “Jack, seriously, tax collectors and prostitutes are getting into heaven before you.”
I’m always left humbled by Jesus’ words. Humbled, not humiliated, but humbled. Humbled to know my place in line.
The good news is there’s never a bad time to be humbled. Humility is always a good response when you have no response. Humility works when nothing else does. Read More
An Ever-Widening & Expanding Circle – Br. Keith Nelson
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Ephphatha. Jesus looked up, breathed out, and said: Be opened.
And the man was opened: brought back from a closed-off place where no words could get in and no meaning could get out. Let through to a wide-open place of many possibilities, where moments before there had been few, and life was merely survival.
How wide can one human heart be opened to the life of God?
This gradual opening of the heart in an ever-expanding trajectory marks the entire arc of Jesus’ life, words, and actions among us. He stood at the center of an ever-widening and expanding circle of relationships. His gospel shows the way toward an ever-widening and expanding circle of participation in the life of the kingdom: the astonishing reality that we are called to direct participation in the inmost life of God.
This is the heart of Jesus. Read More
Humble Like a Child – Br. Lain Wilson
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In my first-grade art class, I remember molding and painting a very rough purplish-gray dinosaur. I was very proud of that dinosaur. It’s still on display a shelf in my childhood bathroom.
I’d like to invite you to remember your own experience of creating something as a child—smudging paint on a piece of paper, building a sandcastle, drawing your family with crayons, or something else. How did it feel?
And what did you do with your creation? Did you keep it to yourself? Or did you run to your friends or parents and show them what you had made, or give it to them as a gift? What did you feel in this sharing or giving?
We as Christians and monks talk about humility a lot. We talk about it as a central virtue, as an antidote to pride, as a way of relating to others as fellow children of God. We talk of humble status, of humble actions, of building or cultivating habits of humility. And all the while, so many of the expectations we face and the performance that is required of us pushes back against that ideal, requiring us to compete against others, to distinguish ourselves. It can be a demoralizing juggling act. Read More
It’s good to think of others – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Maundy Thursday
Well good evening everyone, it’s so good to see you all. Tonight we start our celebration of a glorious long weekend.
I’ll start this long weekend by asking a simple question. Who’s ready to get their feet washed? Or should I ask, who got their feet ready to be washed?
If you are anything like me, at some point every year on Maundy Thursday, I become self-conscious of my feet. I took a good hard look at my toenails. I ask myself questions like what if my feet smell tonight? Do my feet look weird? What does a normal foot even look like? I know these questions sound ridiculous coming from a man who wears sandals year-round, but it’s what I do.
There’s just something about foot washing that’s provoking. It causes a reaction in us. Knowing our bare feet are not only going to be exposed but also handled by someone else makes us feel vulnerable. These moments of vulnerability can be powerful. Read More
Humility, Allowing Our Hearts to Soar – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
A little more than twenty years ago Philip Simmons died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: ALS – or Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was a young professor of English at a Chicago college, married, the father of two children. At the same time Philip Simmons was dying from the cruel ravages of ALS, he was more alive than he had ever been. [i]
He writes about learning to fall. He speaks of falling, quite literally, because of the ALS; he also writes about falling as a figure of speech. We fall on our faces, we fall for a joke, we fall for someone, we fall in love. He asks, in each of these falls, what do we fall away from? We fall from ego, we fall from our carefully-constructed identities, we fall from our reputations, from our precious selves. We fall from ambition, we fall from grasping to control… And what do we fall into? We fall into passion and compassion, into terror, into unreasoning joy. We fall into emptiness; we fall into oneness with others whom we realize are likewise falling. Ultimately it’s a falling into grace, falling into the real presence of God.[ii] The name for this falling, the gateway into this mysterious presence of God, is humility.
In our Gospel lesson appointed for today, we hear Jesus speak of humility: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” The English word “humility” comes from the Latin humilis: “lowly,” or “near the ground.” Humility is the opposite of feeling oneself to be high and lofty, above and beyond all the people whom we find inadequate. The English words “humility” and “humus” are cousins, “humus” being the organic component of soil. Humus is what makes soil rich. The autumnal leaves falling from the trees compost into humus, which is essential to life. Read More
Revelation and the Mystery of Life – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
Commemoration of Edmund James Peck
The portion of Psalm 107 appointed for today – about “going down to the sea in ships… plying trade in deep water… the stormy winds… and then beholding the works of the Lord” – this psalm reads like a biography of Edmund James Peck, whom we commemorate today. Born in the tenements of Manchester, England, in 1850, he entered the Royal Navy while he was still a child, intending to make the Navy his life career. But then a series of near-fatal illnesses and shipboard accidents amazingly led him to experience what he called “the movements of grace,” an experience of Christ “saving him,” quite literally. He became convinced he was to volunteer as a missionary to the Canadian Arctic. And he set off. He would spend most of the next 40 years among the Inuit and Cree people on an immense island in the Arctic – Baffin Island – an area of almost 200,000 square miles. There are two seasons on the Baffin Island: winter and August, when the summertime temperatures sometimes even reach 40 degrees. Read More