Salt is a pretty useful thing.
The history of salt and the virtues thereof have been written on by better minds than I (there is a whole book by Mark Kurlansky: Salt: A World History). And we know what salt does: it preserves, it adds flavour.
I take Isaac of Syria to mean the same thing for humility: it preserves virtue, it brings "flavour" to the virtue by making it fresh and piquant. The path to it, he suggests, is not nearly as "easy" as mining salt or pulling out of dried beds: it involves self-reflection, recognition of where we miss the mark, and judging ourselves accordingly. But, he suggests, the benefits far outweigh the pain of getting there.
But the great thing about gathering the salt of humility? We need neither mine or seabed; we can simply start by looking in the mirror and seeing ourselves as we truly are - and then changing.
In today's climate, becoming an "Isaac the Syrian" sounds kind of appealing. I think I could even do his diet of bread and vegetables while I lived out my years in a secluded monastery.
ReplyDeleteEd, there is a lot to recommend the lifestyle; I am certainly leaning more and more that way myself.
Delete"Seeing ourselves as we truly are." Well, that's the challenge. It's amazingly easy to make excuses for oneself. I suppose that's partly why humility is so hard to hold on to.
ReplyDeleteLeigh, it recalls to my mind the statement in James that we are to look into the perfect mirror of the law of God. We are prone, with regular mirrors, to look and walk away, forgetting what we saw. The challenge is to look into the mirror of God's law and remember what we see there - and act on it.
DeleteYah, that looking in the mirror is a tough one and even more so is recognizing what you see and deciding to change. Deciding to change.....there's a linchpin for you.
ReplyDeleteNylon12, I wonder if the modern world has a much different view of change. Change takes place in the 24 or 45 minutes of a show or the instant "leveling" up that happens in games. True change takes a lot longer.
DeleteA little bit of salt is a good thing. Too much is not.
ReplyDeleteA dose of honest self-reflection is a good thing. Too much can paralyze us.
Too much salt can cause significant health issues, just as too much self-reflection can indeed cause other issues. That said, I think by and large we as a society suffer too much from reflection about everything other than where we miss the mark.
DeleteOne of your best.
ReplyDeleteAww. Thanks John!
Delete