Finis: A Concluding Word

Finis

A CONCLUDING WORD

I began this journal study in humility because, everywhere I looked, I saw narcissism and greed and selfishness dominating the mood of our culture. This was a great sadness to me. It just seemed that people everywhere were at each other’s throats.

But not completely. When I looked hard enough and long enough I could find individuals here and there who exhibited ordinary kindness and simple goodness. But they felt like isolated specks of light in a vast ocean of darkness.

So, I began to wonder about humility—this most fundamental of all virtues. For millennia humility has been valued as a rock-bed character trait of a good person. But not in our day. Why? And, what is humility anyway?

So I launched out into what in the beginning was mostly a personal search. I had been given a bright red journal book as a New Year’s gift, and so I began my search by jotting odd notes and random reflections in it about this subject.

Along the way I have been exceedingly hesitant to say anything to anyone about my humility journaling project. Outside of Carolynn, our son Nathan was the first person I told.

I called him one winter afternoon to boast about our snow. (Now that he lives in Florida he has no need for his snowshoes!) The moment the words were out of my mouth I understood the reason for my hesitancy.

“Oh,” Nate quipped, “a book on humility—that will make you famous for sure!” Smart aleck! His comment, of course, was double pronged. On the surface it was a joke about how few in our contemporary context would want to read about such a countercultural subject. But more deeply he was calling to my attention the incongruity of publishing a book on the subject of humility. “Humility,” a virtue that focuses on obscurity and hiddenness; and “publishing,” a business that stresses name recognition and a wide readership. I was struck with the contradiction. A bit of an oxymoron. To my surprise my search ultimately ended up as this book. Who could have imagined it?

This leads me to you, dear reader. You have picked up a book focused solely on the virtue of humility. You have chosen to reflect on a subject directly counter to the prevailing mood of our culture. Congratulations!

I hope your immersion into the subject of humility has caused you to move in humility’s direction, even if ever so slightly. Do keep going. In due time it will lead you to a deep settledness in your spirit and a keen concern for the bruised and broken of our society.

So, I urge you, my reader friend . . .

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