Exalted!

Humbled

“For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Matthew 23:12

Mother Teresa, in her book The Joy of Loving, gave a list of suggestions for practicing humility. They include, but are not limited to:

“To speak as little as possible of oneself.

To mind one's own business.

To pass over the mistakes of others.

To accept insults and injuries.

To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked.”

Oops! Obviously, I am not Mother Teresa—not even in the same ballpark, or the same time zone! Humility does not come easy to most of us. Perhaps the best description of humility comes from Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Life: “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” We are not expected to grovel and lash ourselves with a whip for having a proud thought; maybe we could just keep it to ourselves a little more often.

Perhaps we could refrain from giving tit-for-tat when someone insults or contradicts us; perhaps we could not bridling when we are corrected. Those adjustments would be hard enough, but not impossible for most of us. Perhaps we could take just one thing from Mother Teresa's list and practice it for one day—say, “To mind one's own business.” or possibly, “To pass over the mistakes of others.” We may have to bite our tongues off to do it, but it could be possible.

Let's face it, we all love to gossip; it's how we bond, and it's as old as humankind. We're not likely to erase that behavior from our repertoire any time soon. The ways we might make gossip less destructive is to not make things up, suggest interpretations, or embellish to make it more interesting or juicy. Also, we could not insult, or intentionally injure another person with our gossiping. Wow! Hard stuff, huh?

Practicing humility is difficult, even if you hone it down to one simple thing—be kind whenever possible. All the things we do to make ourselves feel important and in the “know,” are truly unnecessary, and do not improve us in the eyes of others, but we do them anyway. Maybe, just for today, we could practice kindness. If we feel good about today, then maybe we could do it for two days. I suspect that when we get to the end of our lives, we will feel prouder of our days of kindness than we will of our ability to counter-punch ten times harder.

                                                       In the Spirit,

                                                            Jane