This year I greeted summer’s
warm days with my nose figuratively tipped in the air, resolved to nix any
chance at an old-lady stereotype. I would run hard with our pack of lake-lovers, grateful for old-lady coolness earned while working out at the gym and eating healthy meals. I’d be the tastefully showy grandmother noted for cooking and
cleaning, crafting and interacting with our twelve grandkids, and slalom skiing
as if still in my 20’s. And so I stepped right on into the sun-struck busyness,
treasuring precious lakeside visitors and summer activities.
I’m now more-or-less halfway
through the season, and hold dear so many fresh memories of priceless
relationships and shared summer glory.
But I also can say this: pride
comes before the fall, and granny-coolness is highly overrated. Age-related
vulnerabilities and chronic disabilities have tripped me many times in recent
weeks, like untied shoelaces. I’ve stumbled (inwardly) when I couldn’t hear conversation
or successfully manage noise, keep the active pace, or even get up on the ski (sad
but true) – each time skinning the knees of my soul and bleeding discouragement
from their torn scabs.
And so at this stage I find
myself limping out of my own idealistic way, counting copious blessings, and
switching a measure of my focus from doing
to being – from physical strength and
capability, and that sparkly image of granny-coolness, to more profound and
lasting goals: virtues like humility, contentment, hope, and mercy/compassion.
This reminds me of a quote
from Anthony Bloom who speaks of humility in the context of its Latin
derivative, humus. The rich, productive soil of life that supports such virtues (soil fertilized with loss,
need, and trials) doesn’t require coolness. Rather, it is all about availability and
ready stillness before God, embracing the fertilizing “refuse” of struggle and
change – and receptivity, willingness, and eagerness to participate in the
miraculous transformation of suffering into benefit and lasting hope.
* * *
“The
word humility comes from the Latin word humus which means fertile
ground. Humility is not what we often make of it…but (it) is the situation of
the earth. The earth is always there…silent and accepting everything, and
in a miraculous way, making out of all the refuse new richness in spite of
corruption, transforming corruption
itself into a power of life and a new possibility of creativeness, open to the
sunshine, open to the rain, ready to receive any seed we sow and capable of
bringing thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold out of every seed."
-
Anthony Bloom
