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.
ReplyDelete"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.
ReplyDeleteYah, 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.
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