We human beings are here to help each other, to support each other, to love each other. We cannot be fully human if we are isolated and alone. But to share our love, always we must first love ourselves. It may sound simple, but to live by this principle is at times not easy. Just the same, if we forget to care for our own being, then how can we ever hope to assist others? Only when we come from our own living center can we give our greatest gift to the world.
~ from JOURNEY TO THE FOUR DIRECTIONS by Jim Berenholtz
A saint is a person who practices the keystone human virtue of humility. Humility in the face of wealth and plenty, humility in the face of hatred and violence, humility in the face of strength, humility in the face of your own genius or lack of it, humility in the face of another's humility, humility in the face of love and beauty, humility in the face of pain and death. Saints are driven to humbling themselves before all the splendor and horror of the world because they perceive there to be something divine in it pulsing and alive beneath the hard dead surface of material things -- greater and purer than they are.
Fr. Joe's retort in answser to some enthusiastic piety of mine about the sanctity of community and its high purpose: "Good gracious -- we're not silly old monks mumbling prayers all day. We've got a job to do!" I realized how like him this was, how down-to-earth encapsulating his generous view of the ordinary. Every word he spoke was drawn from a deep well of generosity. He hade built it up over decades of contemplating people and loving them all without reserve. His gentle power spring from a straightforward assessment of the world and his job in it. That job was love.
