It’s been a month since I last posted anything. Severe pain in my right arm and shoulder has kept me from doing much typing. I’ve already gone through one stretch of prednisone treatment and am now taking two other medications, methylprednisolone and another whose name I can’t remember. I have another post still in draft stage and I hope to finish it soon. It’s about the new icon in our church. If you haven’t read the article our local newspaper did on us you can access it here http://www.pressherald.com/news/holy-strokes_2011-08-22.html

Today I want to write about something else. August 29 is an important holy day in our church, the day on which we commemorate the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. John was executed because he spoke truth to power. His message was not religious in the conventional sense. His message was also political, because he could not separate his religious beliefs from issues of justice and public behavior. He spoke and he paid with his life.

Another man who spoke and paid with his life was a man who lived much closer in time and place to us. Forty-eight years ago yesterday, on August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The official dedication this weekend of the new Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington had to be canceled because of Hurricane Irene.

Every country has its memorials to great men and women. And so do religions. In the Orthodox Church we call them “saints” and we build many memorials to them: icons and shrines. Most churches are dedicated to particular saints, so churches are memorials as well. The building of memorials seems to be an irresistible urge for humans everywhere. It was definitely time a memorial was erected in the nation’s capital to the man who did more than anyone else in the 20th century to move this country away from some shameful aspects of our national history.

But is there a danger with memorials? Do memorials risk taming the message of the men and women commemorated? Do we risk forgetting that Martin Luther King was murdered for speaking out against injustice, economic inequality, and the war in Vietnam? This is one of the questions raised in a poem by Carl Wendell Hines. Here is a portion of this poem:

“Now that he is safely dead,
Let us Praise him,
Build monuments to his glory,
Sing Hosannas to his name.

Dead men make such convenient Heroes.
They cannot rise to challenge the images
We would fashion from their Lives.
And besides, it is easier to build monuments
Than to build a better world.”

How true those last two line: It is easier to build monuments than to build a better world. No matter how impressive the memorial, Martin Luther King’s dream remains a dream; still unfulfilled in this country and around the world, still fought by those who deny the equality of all men and women and equal access to justice and socio-economic freedom. Does building a memorial in the nation’s capital give the false message that the dream has become reality? Perhaps the poem is a more truthful testament to Martin Luther King than the memorial in Washington. What do you think?

“I would just like to say one sentence: This is the most humble day of my life.” Media magnate Rupert Murdoch interrupted his son’s testimony to a Parliament committee last week to say that one sentence. He certainly looked humble as he sat there, often with his head bowed down and an expression on his face that tried to say, “Look how humble I am.” How much of the humility displayed was real is not for me to judge. But I do wish to discuss that sentence he interrupted his son to say.

Humility can come from within and it can come from without. Humility comes from within when we are honest with ourselves. Humility comes from without when outside forces confront us about what we’ve done or are doing. Then we are humbled, even if only for three hours in front of the cameras. Perhaps Mr. Murdoch would have been more correct to say, “This is the most humbling day of my life.”

But “humble”? That’s a spiritual state. We are humble before God when we cultivate within ourselves a state of awareness, as we gradually drop our defenses and our fears and our attachment to self-image. Those are hard enough – almost impossible – to attain for ordinary mortals like you and me. But for a man like Rupert Murdoch? How does a man who has built his life around relentless acquisition practice self-emptying, which is the essence of humility? Again, I’m not judging his honesty or sincerity last week. I’m simply questioning whether he is even capable of knowing what it is to be “humble.”

But it’s not only Rupert Murdoch who has a problem here; we do too. How many of us cultivate a practice of self-emptying and letting go of attachments? I venture to say that most of us end up in the same place where Mr. Murdoch found himself on Tuesday. In other words, we are humbled by outside forces. Humility does not come easily.

The New Testament is full of statements about humility. But it’s never about learning techniques of humility. It’s always about being humble – which usually means to simply be.

Orthodox tradition has added to what we find in the New Testament. But other wisdom traditions also have much to teach us. Here is a beautiful story from the Zen tradition.

“Is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened?” asked the student.
“As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning,” replied the Master.
“Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you are teaching me?”
“To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.”

It was “the most humble day” of Mr. Murdoch’s life because he had to appear before the cameras and face tough questioning. That’s a humbling experience for one of the most powerful men on earth. But true humility is more likely to come from being able to see the sun rise! True humility comes from being awake – not just physically, but spiritually, in touch with the wonder of the universe and the wonder of human lives. Does Mr. Murdoch ever see the real world instead of the world he and his editors are creating in the increasingly banal world of media boardrooms?

I started writing this blog entry last week, after the Murdoch testimony in London, but I laid it aside in order to enjoy a little vacation time. It’s now Monday of the following week and the world has moved on to face a new horror – the cold-blooded murder of 76 people in Norway by a far-right Christian nationalist. It’s horrifying to read the language he’s been using since his arrest. “Gruesome but necessary,” he calls his actions, but he will plead not guilty! He actually considers himself not a criminal, but a martyr!! According to his own 1500-page (!) manifesto, he was strongly influenced by some prominent anti-Moslem bloggers and writers. And did you notice that in the early hours of the attacks, the speculation was that these were al-Qaeda attacks? Moslems are the favorite scapegoats these days, right up there with “illegal immigrants.” With his murderous rampage this man wanted to “start a revolution” to stop the spread of Islam and change Europe’s immigration policies. A truly humbling day for the whole human race!

And let’s not talk about the other humbling things going on in the world, including Washington. Have we humans become so arrogant that we can only be humbled by our own atrocities? I fear that worse things wait for us. Perhaps you have some thoughts about all this.

FrC