Content warnings: mental illness, suicidal ideation, Christianity, Buddhism

Living humbly

As I wrote in a previous blog post, one of my favourite passages from any novel is the conversation at the climax of The Catcher in the Rye, in which a slightly sloshed Mr Antolini (an English teacher) offers encouragement and wisdom to the restless and alienated protagonist. From that conversation:

“I don’t want to scare you,” he [Mr Antolini] said, “but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause. […] If I write something down for you, will you read it carefully? And keep it?” […] He went over to this desk on the other side of the room, and without sitting down wrote something on a piece of paper. Then he came back and sat down with the paper in his hand. […] ‘The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.’

Self-acceptance and self-confidence as part of humility

I frequently get too big for my boots. This happens a lot, and it is a sign of my own limited wisdom and insight. Perhaps it’s a way for God to remind me that (in the words of marijuana dealer Heylia from the comedy TV series Weeds), “y’aint shit”. I’ve always believed that God has a sense of humour.

But the more frequent and crippling temptation, in my own experience, is the dark despair of depression, and this is often triggered by low self-worth and insufficient self-esteem.

The transgender Buddhist practitioner La Sarmiento (they/them), discusses gender identity and meditation practice. Buddhist practice often centers on letting go of one’s sense of self — and there is an apparent tension with transgender experiences, which celebrate discovering one’s sense of self. Sarmiento writes:

From my experience, it’s in having a strong sense of self that I’m then able to let go of that self. And not before.

Em von Euw (they/them, I think) picks up this theme. From the book chapter “‘Coming Home to Themselves’: The Resonance of Non-self and Impermanence for Transgender Buddhists” (Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices, eds. Elizabeth Marston and Kevin Manders):

In the case of transgender Buddhists, perhaps finding their true self—in terms of their true gender—is not in opposition to the dhamma, but in line with the dhamma. […] Transgender and gender nonconforming Buddhists understand anattā in a dynamic sense, as part of a process of self-discovery on a path to non-self.

This has definitely aligned with my own experience, from both the lens of my transgender experience and mental illness. Consider the darker periods fo my life, during which I grapple with either social conflict or the isolating and crippling anguish of depression. If I practice humility without self-confidence, there is a risk that I descend into self-hatred and its natural consequence: suicidal ideation. Thus, I have found a genuine and persistent sense of self-confidence — quiet and measured but rock solid — is a necessary precondition to humility.

Humility comes from God

From Thomas R. Kelly’s 1941 book of essays A Testament of Devotion: Five Quaker Essays on Finding Inner Peace Through God’s Presence and Simplification:

In this humanistic age we suppose man is the initiator and God is the responder. But the Living Christ within us is the initiator and we are the responders. […] And all our apparent initiative is already a response, a testimonial to His secret presence and working within us.

Humility does not rest, in final count, upon baffiement and discouragement and self-disgust at our shabby lives, a brow-beaten, dog-slinking attitude. It rests upon the disclosure of the consummate wonder of God, upon finding that only God counts, that all our own self-originated intentions are works of straw. And so in lowly humility we must stick close to the Root and count our own powers as nothing except as they are enslaved in His power.

For as He gives obedience so He graciously gives to us what measure of humility we will accept. Even that is not our own, but His who also gives us obedience.

Humility as healing

From The Spirit of Prayer, a collection of essays and prayers by 18th-century Anglican priest William Law:

Could you see what every stirring of pride does to your soul, you would beg of everything you meet to tear the viper from you, though with the loss of a hand or an eye. Could you see what a sweet, divine, transforming power there is in humility, how it expels the poison of your nature, and makes room for the Spirit of God to live in you, you would rather wish to be the footstool of all the world than want the smallest degree of it.

Advice for developing humility

In the 1895 book Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness, South African pastor Andrew Murray offers advice:

  • Reflect on Jesus: “Study the humility of Jesus. This is the secret, the hidden root of thy redemption. Sink down into it deeper day by day.”
  • Reflect on God: “Not to be occupied with thy sin, but to be occupied with God, brings deliverance from self.”
  • Practice, practice, practice: “Let us look upon every brother who tries or vexes us, as God’s means of grace, God’s instrument for our purification, for our exercise of the humility Jesus our Life breathes within us.”