Living Humbly

"Humility and a sense of entitlement are bad bedfellows. If it is true that the meek shall inherit the earth, the entitled shall certainly contest their inheritance!

How did life become this way for so many of us? What happened to gratefulness, appreciation of the simple things in life, and a clear recognition that in the end all is gift? When did artificial needs become so powerfully consuming? Suggest to someone today that they can be happy with less and they think you are being absurd. …

Ever sense the so called self-actualization movement of the 1960’s, people have been taught that what they really must do to be truly happy is to step forward and get what is rightfully theirs. They must be willing to take the necessary risks to get what they deserve out of life. I think this is the wrong risk for most people to take much of the time. To do so means that we spend most of our waking time constantly chasing and claiming rather than enjoying the life set before us. I believe that a more appropriate and powerful question that we should ask ourselves today is, ‘Am I taking enough risks to fully enjoy what I already have?’

Of course, the question is counter-cultural. It is tied more to a spirit of humility than a sense of entitlement. The consumer society we live in tries to keep us off balance. It urges us to be continuously in search of those things and people that are rightfully ours, and to believe that they will in the end, make us whole" (Robert J. Wicks. Crossing the Desert: Learning to let go see clearly and live simply. Norte Dame: Sorin Books, 2007. 65ff).

What a question! “Am I taking enough risks to fully enjoy what I already have?”

Believe it or not, but that is one of the themes that have come up in conversations lately. How do I live humbly with others? the environment? myself? And am I willing to risk to live well now? Life is not fragile, but it is unpredictable. A school superintendent goes home for lunch a month before retirement, to not come back to the office. It turns out he had a heart attack over his lunch break. A month into retirement, a new retiree has a stroke. Cancer strikes a community member and plans are changed.

It seems to me that most of us out living on our boats have thought about these sorts of things. And there is a strong sense of wanting to have lived a life well lived: a life lived with dignity, grace and humility. By living in such a way we encounter God's gifts anew in sunrises and sunsets, in the mewing of gulls and screeches of terns. And we are thankful and humbled to have received these gifts of Grace.