Tag Archives: humility

Shakespeare on Hypocrisy

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Shakespeare does it again! Just when I’m taking comfort, so luxuriously ensconced in my humility, he punctures my bubble:

When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforcèd ceremony.
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle.

Ever caught yourself being full of yourself? Ever caught yourself being pious and righteous? Ever caught yourself doing so “like horses hot at hand”? What an incredible image this is. I can see the huge horses, snorting and pawing the air, announcing, “Hey, everyone! I’m here. Look at me.”

Now in fairness to myself, I am not as guilty of this as in my youth but it still happens. Then “mindfulness” will visit me in (spite of myself), and the sting of conscience will prick me. Then, suddenly humbled by self-awareness, I will utter the famous word of Texas Governor Rick Perry, “Oops!” For I have been caught looking foolishly full of myself.

“Hollow men” wear their faith for show. In another play, Shakespeare said of them, “With devotions visage and pious action, they do sugar o’er the devil himself.” They often mean well and are often only of guilty of immaturity. But they do great harm. I think the televangelists are a good example of this “horses hot at hand” type of faith. These fellows are usually performance artists and prey on an unlearned audience, one that lacks the gift of a discriminating ear.

To use still another notion from Shakespeare, these “hollow men” have hearts that are “bronzed over” by “damned custom” so that it is “proof and bulwark against sense.” Yes, the heart has been replaced by “damn custom” or these aforementioned cognitions, the pious jargon, so that the heart itself is “proof and bulwark” against “sense” or “feeling.” Thus the heart is empty of feeling and the person living merely in the grasp of the conceptual is a “hollow man” and must make “gallant show and promise of their mettle.”

For, the “plain and simple faith” that Jesus spoke of is not available to them, the faith that Jesus had in mind when he spoke of the need of coming to him with the faith of little children. I now work often with little children and their sweet little hearts are just overflowing with faith—faith in mommy and daddy, faith in their teachers, faith in their budding notions of “god”, faith in the world they are exploring, and even faith in an old substitute teacher like me! It is beautiful to see their simple trust. This is the “simple faith” that Shakespeare had in mind and the faith that Jesus calls us to.

But, oh, it is so much easier to just rely on what we are accustomed to, those “well worth words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness,” even if they are the “Christian” variety!

Thomas Merton and Humility

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Thomas Merton was such a gift to Christianity and to mankind as a whole. He had deep spiritual insight which has fallen on deaf ears in most instances as is usually the case with Truth. I often quote W. H. Auden on this note, “And Truth met him and held out her hand. And he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

Here is a stirring observation by Merton:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and absolute poverty is the pure Glory of God written in us, as our poverty, our indigence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that could make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

As I copy this for you I am stirred once more. This is now added to my daily devotional. It is absolutely stirring and painfully humbling. I really like his conclusion, “I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.” We prefer a “program” as that is easier. A program offers “slam, bam, thank you ma’am” with everything written up neatly in a little syllogism. And when we can wrap spirituality up like that we have succeeded in co-opting God, in maintaining our illusion of supremacy under the guise of spirituality. If we look closely, with a discerning spirit (and practice “mindfulness”) we have to acknowledge, ‘Oh, this is all about me.”

I conclude with part of a stirring sonnet by John Masefield about this spiritual smugness:

How many ways, how many different times
The tiger mind has clutched at what it sought,
Only to prove supposed virtues crimes,
The imagined godhead but a form of thought.
How many restless brains have wrought and schemed,
Padding their cage, or built, or brought to law,
Made in outlasting brass the something dreamed,
Only to prove (itself) the thing held in awe.

The Essense of Religion

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In the following poem, Hafiz offers true wisdom into the essence of religion. And it is not about lofty theology, or philosophy, or powerful mega-churches. There is so much egotism in spirituality–such a great desire to have “great” visions of God, or attend “great” churches, or be a “great” Christian.  (Hafiz was a 14th century Persian poet!)

Becoming Human

by Hafiz

Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about
“His great visions of God” he felt he was having.

He asked me for confirmation, saying,
“Are these wondrous dreams true?”

I replied, “How many goats do you have?”

He looked surprised and said,
“I am speaking of sublime visions
And you ask
About goats!”

And I spoke again saying,
“Yes, brother – how many do you have?”

“Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.”

“And how many wives?”

Again he looked surprised, then said,
“Four.”

“How many rose bushes in your garden,
How many children,
Are your parents still alive,
Do you feed the birds in winter?”

And to all he answered.

Then I said,

“You asked me if I thought your visions were true,
I would say that they were if they make you become
More human,

More kind to every creature and plant
That you know.”

I Want to be (Un)Famous!

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I think all of us want to be famous meaning we want to be admired and love more than we can possibly be.  We want to be the BMOC or BWOC.  And some of us get to be but most of us are confined to obscurity and left with the vicarious satisfaction that comes from glomming onto (identifying with) popular heroes—sports stars, movie stars, musicians, political figures…and in my case, literary greats.

But I think we can still take great satisfaction in being insignificant  For, life is inherently paradoxical, nothing is as it seems, and if we look carefully at what we are doing we can take great satisfaction in our meagre, “insignificant” station in life.  If we have the humility to realize that our prime responsibility is to merely show up and fulfill our responsibilities…mundane though they may be…then we are doing our part in keeping this dog-and-pony show afloat.  And that IS significant and we can take the same satisfaction that we could have if we were famous!  There IS glory and power in mere Be-ing.  And ultimately, there is found the only Glory and Power in the universe even for those who are the movers-and-shakers in our world.

T. S. Eliot advised us to “offer our deeds to oblivion.”  That was not nihilistic…he was a man of great Christian faith.  He was merely noting that we should live our life as productively and meaningfully as we can and then realize that the outcome is beyond us, and we must trust that our actions will be helping to the unfolding of God’s purpose.  Eliot, in the same marvelous poem, The Four Quartets, said that this faith requires merely, “prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.”   Here is a marvelous poem by Naomi Shihab Nye about this type of “fame,” entitled, Famous:

 

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Ignorance is Bliss

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The more I learn the more I know how little I know. (It makes me think of an old quip from a pastor of mine, “If ignorance was bliss, we’d be blistered.”)

William Butler Yeats put it this way, “Throughout all the lying days of my youth, I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun. Now may I wither into the truth.”

I once read a book entitled, “The Art of Unknowing” in which a psychiatrist explained how his clients were taught to un-learn many of the basic assumptions they had imbibed in their early life.

In the end, life comes down to mystery. We assume we know what is going on but from time to time Reality visits us and we are stunned, bewildered, and humbled. Most of the time we shut this experience out and try to arrange our lives to keep it from happening again. W. H. Auden wrote, “And Truth met him and held out her hand. But he clung in panic to his tall beliefs and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

But we should welcome the occasion. Grace is trying to visit us. It could be amazing! And on that note, let me conclude with a thought from the poet Mary Oliver:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms

Get Over Yourself!

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Jesus spent thirty years roaming around the little corner of the globe he happened upon, noting the complete insanity of its inhabitants, and then spent three years admonishing them…and I summarize (and use my “literary” license)…to “get over yourself!” And then he provided specifics about how to accomplish this self-abnegation, which are eloquently described in the New Testament and then later summarized by W. H. Auden (or was it Leonard Cohen?), “Climb the rugged cross of the moment and let your illusions die.” Yes, dying to self ultimately means being disillusioned and seeing yourself as you really are, just a “poor bare forked creature” (King Lear) “pelted” by the same “pitiless storm” that has pelted us for eons.

In that moment of humility, i.e. humiliation, one can then choose to affirm with belief/action what his/her ultimate value is and then be guided toward that end. But one is then shorn of his/her grandiosity and realizes that he/she is a mere human, a human be-ing, and has that station by virtue of the simple but illimitable and marvelous grace of God. For, “by him all things cohere”; yes, even the simple be-ing of my day to day life exists and “coheres” by the grace of God. Therefore, I don’t have anything to prove, I don’t have to persuade you to subscribe to my creed, I merely have to be. And as I “be”, the Grace of God will flow through me; and the universe…and His will…will unfold. But if I stubbornly adhere to my own agenda, to my own ego-driven demands….”enlightened” and “Christian” as I might assume them to be…then the “flow” cannot take place, at least through me.

Yes, the meaning of the Cross is to “get over yourself.” It is easier to invest in the gore of the Cross and to self-flagellate with an emotional anguish. It is much more difficult to “get over yourself”, to die to the ego and do so daily as Paul admonished, and then engage more fully and maturely in the human enterprise.

Richard Rohr on Humility

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I quote Richard Rohr more than any contemporary spiritual leader. Once again I strongly recommend that you subscribe to his free daily blog as it is always very insightful and very encouraging. He says everything I could ever say and says it much better and much more succinctly.

In his book, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, he noted, “I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then I must watch my reaction to it. In my position, I have no other way of spotting both my well-denied shadow self and my idealized persona.”

Rohr is very attuned to the pernicious presence of the ego in all spiritually-inclined people and is forthright about wrestling with his own ego daily. I think that his daily prayer for “one good humiliation a day” is his way of asking for his eyes to be opened daily to his own frailty and egotism. For, it is often very humiliating when this happens to someone, especially one who holds himself/herself forth as a “spiritual person.”

I do not think he is calling for us to deliberately go out and humiliate ourselves each day. He is merely asking us to pay attention, to be honest with ourselves, to practice “mindfulness” and be prepared to embrace the subjective experience of a sudden illumination about our own “flesh” being hard at work in our spiritual practice. This might be merely being taken aback, or given pause, or embarrassed, or yes it might be occasionally humiliating. It might even be as simple as a “Rick Perry moment” when we have to say “oops” to some obviously self-serving spiritual enterprise.

T. S. Eliot noted in The Four Quartets:

Oh the shame of motives late revealed,
And the awareness of things ill done
And done to others’ harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Prayer and humility

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I have discoursed several times re prayer and its meditative function. I don’t believe that God sits “up there” waiting to bestow “stuff” on us when we want or to bail us out of a mess we have created with our life. I think prayer, like all dimensions of spirituality, is ultimately a mystery. I don’t know definitively how it works but I do believe that it is important that we pray.  So I think you should pray as you are inclined to pray. You know as much about this mystery as I do. But I hope that you will consider the perspective that I offer from time to time.

Rabbi Adam Jacobs made an interesting point in the Huffington Post that I would like to share. He noted that in the Hebrew language the word “to pray” is a reflexive verb, something you do to yourself. And the root of the word means “to judge”, “rendering the actual translation of prayer as something more akin to self-evaluation. Therefore, when a person stands before God to communicate, she is taking stock of her capabilities, current level of spiritual consciousness and willingness to accept reality for what it truly is. The deeper notion is that we are willfully trying to integrate the inescapable fact that we are utterly dependent on the Creator.”
The upshot of this observation is that humility is an essential element in prayer. And humility always comes hard to those of us who have been educated into “humility.”  And I close with my favorite Shakespearean observation re prayer, King Claudius on his knees in prayer, offering the following observation, “My words fly up.  My thoughts remain below.  Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”