GETTING HUMBLE

I sat through most of a 12 Step meeting today, secretly having trouble with the people who shared as well as the others. People in these meetings out here are different than the people were back East. Back in Westport the people seem to be more refined. First of all, most of the men wear ties to the meetings and almost all the women wear designer dresses.

No comparison here. This is the wild west and not only do the folks dress like it, they act like it too. They are much more rough around the edges than what I'm used to. A lot of them haven't had a bath in a while. Several are just out of prison and you sense a heavy dose of anger in the room.

But in a lot of ways I think this is good for me. I am the kind of man who can puff himself up with no trouble at all. Like I was saying, I was sitting in this meeting today, thinking basically, that I was better than everone else.

I know that I'm not--at least I know it when I'm reminded of it. Which I need to be, continually.

Ever since I've been out here, I've been thinking of Indians. I've taken a pile of books about Indians out of the library and they are helping me to become more connected with this place which was, not all that long ago, Indian territory. As a matter of fact, the meeting I sat in today was run by an Indian.

About getting humble, here is the beginning of "Black Elk Speaks" maybe the greatest spiritual book ever written by an American. This is from the first chapter called "the Offering of the Pipe."

Black Elk Speaks:
My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winter, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many oher men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills.

It is the story of kufe tgat us holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit.

This, then, is not the tale of a great hunter or of a great warrior, or of a great traveler, although I have made much meat in my time and fought for my people both as boy and man, and have gone far and seen strange lands and men. So also have many others done, and better than I. These things I shall remember by the way, and often they may seem to be the very tale itself, as when I was living them in happiness and sorrow. But now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people's heart with floweres and singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people's dream that died in bloody snow.

But if the vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet; for such things are of the spirti, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost."

What could be more humbling, and more eloquently said than this: "for what is one man that he should make much of his winter, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many oher men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills."

I am continually being humbled; sometimes I wonder why do I bother to write at all?

Posted by Tony at November 24, 2003 11:34 PM