Humility…3 – 21 July 2017

Numbers 3 and 4 of Benedict’s Twelve Steps of Humility:

Seek direction from wisdom figures.

Endure the pains of development and do not give up.

This time, in our pursuit of humility, we can perhaps start with the second one… about the pains of development, and about not giving up.  What we used to call growing pains was part of my adolescence, although I am given to understand that growing pains is not a respectable diagnosis.  But we did recognise that the changes of adolescence, for instance, or for that matter of any time of growth and change, are rarely without pain.  Pain typically accompanies change.  The pain may be physical, it may be emotional, or both, and it may be significant.

If you have ever in your life sought counsel from someone who proved to be exactly right at that time, and you found wisdom at the time, some enlightenment that stayed with you, changed things and set you on a fresh course… then you will understand easier what we say here.  Remember, we are talking about humility – and you may have found the humility to seek wise counsel, to learn it and to follow it.  Wise counsel is not thick on the ground.  There are plenty of counsellors, and counselling is routinely wheeled in whenever there has been sudden trauma or tragedy – and it may indeed be helpful.  But what Benedict advises is wisdom, which is not the same thing.  Wisdom in the biblical sense is a gift from God.  We know when we meet wisdom because we sense that we now need to be still and listen.  It evokes and requires humility.  Wisdom will very likely indicate the need for change, and change will likely entail pain.

For some, the encounter with wisdom may not be necessarily from talking with a wise person, so much as reading a book.  I am in no doubt that, in a life of contemplative prayer, writings which may otherwise have been merely interesting somehow become seminal – new seeds get planted, new ways open up… old ways and patterns may come to be questioned, perhaps with pain.

John Main, a young recruit in the British diplomatic service in what was then Malaya, trained in the law and very bright, encountered a Hindu swami.  It was for John Main an encounter with wisdom.  Swami Satyananda taught this young, talented Irish Catholic lawyer how… the aim of meditation is coming to awareness of the Spirit of the Universe who dwells in our hearts in silence.  God is already abiding in us.  Wisdom taught that all we have to “do” is be still and silent.  If we come from a heritage of busy prayer, with much to do and say, disciplines to accomplish, then this wisdom may seem altogether too simplistic.  Indeed, it does require humility, and for John Main there was first the humility to learn from someone of another faith and another culture altogether.  Out of that wisdom has flowed, in a real sense, the whole international movement of the World Community for Christian Meditation.

So humility entails seeking wisdom, and enduring the likely pain of change.  It sounds to me like the continuing task of a lifetime, and for that we need a simple discipline of stillness and silence – our inner consent to the Spirit of God who dwells in our hearts in silence.