Dear Benedict,
I walk a lot and you write a lot. In chapter 7 of your Rule, you write that there are 12 steps to humility. It’s certainly a long chapter and one, as you might imagine, I have issues with.
I’m not sure how many people would regularly use the word ‘humility’ today. Like some other words in your Rule it has been left on the sidelines and replaced by more modern concepts. Self awareness is perhaps the most obvious because being humble is not just about imagining ourselves lower, but perhaps more about enacting equality.
Would you wish to be kissed after football match? It’s caused quite a row in Spain who won the cup but not the issue of equality. Of course, I’m not sure any country would be able to claim it had got that fully worked out, but in some ways, the issue of sexual harassment arising in Spain has granted it more exposure than if it was Iran or UK, for example. It’s now a year since street protests began in Iran over the death of a young woman considered to be wearing the wrong clothing, or rather not wearing the right clothing. In that year many others have been killed and injured in the resulting protests. Some consider what they wear to be a sign of humility but surely that is only true if it is freely chosen. Equality is based on informed choice.
In the UK various events across the summer have celebrated Pride, often seen as the opposite to humility, but in this case the capital letter denotes a particular kind of Pride related to identity. Even though now acceptance of LGBTQ identities are more widespread in the UK this has not stopped violence against those embracing such identities. In a country of choices some choices are still considered more equal than others.
Times change and 5th century Europe was a different place to the one of the 21st century. And so humility was the word you choose for your 12 steps. Self awareness seems to balance both humility and pride saying ‘I am not greater than you but I am your equal’. In that equality I can be gracious, grateful, and generous. I cannot be these thing freely if I am forced to do them from a down-trodden position. As it is I can choose to do them from an equal position. We are not forced to follow poor leaders but welcome the chance to travel with our equals.
And so, if I might suggest a rewrite, the 13th step is equality, faced full on.
From my remembered bible: Jesus said ‘Come with me’.
Let us start from a position of equality, one step at a time.
From a Friend of Scholastica, in Longdendale, 03.09.2023