Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5

The word “meek” is an unfortunate translation of this Beatitude. We equate being meek as “being a pushover, having no spine, not standing up for yourself.” The milk toast my mother used to give me when I had stomach issues comes to mind.

But being “gentle, “humble” “strong” and “healthy” are valued by most, and are found in the translation of the Aramaic beatitude Tubwaykhon l’makikhe d’hinon neptune arha

“‘Blessed are the gentle. Aligned with the One are the humble, those submitted to God’s will. They shall be gifted with the productivity of the earth. Healthy are those who have softened what is rigid within. They shall receive vigor and strength.”  “Blessings of the Cosmos” Dr. Neil Douglas Klotz

All these attributes are valued by most of us. There is something within us that knows gentleness and humility. When we spot them in someone else, ‘like’ is attracted to ‘like.’  They rise up into our awareness, calling for our attention.

We don’t experience genuine gentleness or humility within ourselves by trying harder to be those things. Nor do we experience them by telling ourselves that we should be more gentle or humble. That kind of gentleness or humility is shallow and brief.

We often come to know a genuine gentleness or humility through experience. And the experience itself will naturally raise them up within us.

We are treated harshly. We see someone or an animal being treated harshly. Or we treat ourselves harshly. And the pain of that harshness feels like it violates something sacred within us. We may feel a rising up of our innate Divine gentleness as a result.

We may experience someone else’s ego, or we wake up to the emptiness and futility experienced when we express our own ego.

We take in the gentleness and humility of another, and that beautifully resonates with our own. It just feels right. It feels like our true Home. Our inherent Divine gentleness and humility rise up within us.

It takes an inner softness and flexibility to adjust to and welcome a new idea or perspective. But we may experience someone who is rigid within themselves and won’t bend, change, or accept the good that is trying to come to them. Or we feel the angst of our own rigidness, grow weary of it, and embrace the softness of Spirit already within us.

Often we come to humility only through our ego kicking and screaming and being defeated. Richard Rohr said, “I have prayed for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it.”  As we watch our reaction, we can notice if we are welcoming it as something that has come to soften us.  Or does it find no room in the rigidness and resistance of our ego?

No matter how gentleness and humility rise up into our consciousness, it is there we are “aligned with the One.” We are aligned with our Truth. The blockages that rigidness and ego cause are reduced. We become better conduits of the Flow, and we are gifted with everything the Flow is wanting to bring to us, and through us to others. We “inherit the earth” as we attract toward ourselves all that life on earth can bring us.

Most of us want to be around people who are gentle and genuinely humble in a healthy way.

It takes a lot of humiliations. It takes a lot of our own Good Fridays (dying to the ego) and our own Easters (a rising up of our Truth within) to realize we are Love’s gentleness and humility.

As I wrote in the first post in this series, the Beatitudes do not help us avoid what is difficult in life. Rather, they lead us straight through it.

The only way through is through.

Pastor Tim Tengblad

timtengblad@comcast.net