Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

Page 30 text:

blessed are the meek s A CHILD AND A BOY, I sat side by side with my sister at the family Bible readings, and did my best to pay attention to the words. I suppose I gave little thought to what I heard, but there was one passage which inevitably caught my interest and over which I puzzled, it seems to me now, from my very earliest years. The passage was the sermon on the mount - often spoken of as The Beatitudes - and the beatitude which I found most difficult to understand was the one which promised the earth to the meek. Blessed are the meek - for they shall inherit the earth . The meek! It struck me, as a child, that a world inherited by the meek was a place I could do without. And later, as I became conscious of the w-orld of men and affairs, it seemed to me that the dictum was no more than wishful thinking. It was not so much, now, that I did not want the beatitude to be true, as that I could not see how it could be true. And then, for no reason that I kn-ow of, an interpretation presented itself to me. My difficulty had resulted from what seems to me now to have been a misinterpretation of terms. I had been reading the beatitude something like this: Blessed are the timid and ineffectual, for when all other types have failed, they will be left to take over the planet like a colony of white rabbits. It sounds foolish, stated like that, but how many ot' you who have heard the beatitude have not had some such thought in mind? But when Christ spoke to the 'meek', did he mean the timid and the ineffectual, the rabbits of this world? XVhen he spoke of 'inheriting the earth' was he intending to imply something in the distant future, a taking over, or falling heir to the actual land mass of the planet? The more I thought about it, the more this seemed to me an absurd over-simplification of his statement. 'Inherit' must mean something more actual, more immediate, more possible to each generation. Suppose to inherit meant this: to be aware of the joy of living because ot' a capacity for living fully, for appreciation of the possibilities of life. Then the implicati-on of the beatitude would be that the fellow who is puffed up with self-importance cannot see the World as it really is, nor enjoy its benefits. His ego-his 'I am '-has grown too large. lt has become a hedge around him-a hedge grown too tall for his meagre stature. He cannot see over it. He cann-ot appreciate his fellow men, or the works of his fellow men, nature, or the burning mysteries of life and death. But where does this leave us in our interpretation? What of the word 'meek'? To whom does 'the meek' refer? Twenty-six

Page 29 text:

NPZII' the unil of the wait' I hzifl pziiil oft' ai ship in llontrvzll. Waigies wow high thcn :mil thi- immning' pools iIi1In't It-:nw you nshorm- wry long: Vomingf tzllkwl ol' il Swiiiiziifs mission hi- hopi-il to huihl :intl szniml hi- was 4-:iiiwissiiig lltll' mont-y. I haul ai listlful ot' hills :intl oxpi-vtiiig Iittli- timi- in whit-h to spit-nil thvm, I gain- him om' lmmlrvil :intl titty ilollnrs, thinking it 21 gioorl 4-mist-. Ili- pourwl out his thzinks :intl grzntt-t'lilly hill mi- gooil-lm'Ic For thi- lutliri-. It 's luliiiy what il hi-fl IIIUEIIIS to zz mein, most ol' thi-m will spy-nfl thi-ir Inst 1-1-nt on ei hwl For thv night vvi-n il' it im-ans going without t'ooil. iWIion I stuinhlcml into that little mission om- 1-olcl night lust wi-ok, I lmiln't an 4-ont, :intl I was ilcspt-mtl-. Hoing' Io thi- ill-sk who shoulil I tinil hut my littlv trim-ml? IRI liznvi- known him ziliywlivn- :intl siltliougli I km-w ho roi-ogiiim-il im-, hm- insuli- out hi- ilieIn't. Now, only tlirm- yi-urs hznl gona- hy sinvv our tirst im-I-ting: hut thy- timos haul f'llilllg'HI1 ho was now tho N1'I'lII't' vitizon :mil I tho In-g1'g'zli'. Hut I-vm-ii thc-n his rvply to my iwqiim-st kno:-ki-il mi- lor ei loop. Ilv sam' no rvzisoii why I shoulrl hi' sillowwl to sly-op tlim-ro, hm- sziiil. 'I'his mission 1-:in only opviwitc- wht-n supportcil hy paying' 1-Iii-iitvlc-. Now I lmyi- soon it alll, I tliouglit. wlizit voiilil I :lo hut ri-tlirn to thi' volil 7 ziml ilesvrtwl strvvt. inwzirmlly iwigiiig. Wheat I-oiilfl innkm- si main lilu- tliziti It was that night that I ill-viflwl to got to svn Cllly wary possihlv .... Now I stunfl In-ro in thi- hows. :intl wzitvli thi- glow ol' thi- 1-ity shrinking into thc horizon. Thi- l'i1-sli sznlt nit' hlowing' stn-znlily on my fzim- :incl tho gi-ntlif rise- znml IDIIIIIQU ot' tht- ill-vk In-mlzitli my lk-vt, tho roar ol' thi- how wziw wlii-n thc- ship invvts tho swim-ll, :ill :mf musii- to my 1-urs and lvnel my hotly an ni-xy tie-sirc to livin As I In-:ul to sc-zu on this rusty olil twuinp I know l'lIOI'l'lS iiowlu-rv I'fI rzitlivi' hc than lwrv. zlwaiy from thi- lnnil :intl :ill its swi-oti ilwf-ptions. among . . . . . . mvn who think zinil tool :is I :lo zihout lilo, :intl sm- In-il with om' 4-ommon honil for si Voy:lg1-ssl1iy'i- of thi-ii' ship illltl lust For thi' si-zu. sdloiix l,i'i'i4 BIIIDNIHIVI' 'I'II.XIN A swolling' sta-zini-rozii' intruili-il on night. llumlv it vomprvss I'UIIIl4l my he-il. Then 5 impersonal ss strielvnt f-W rvniotv. Czunv thi- shrill whistls- noti-, .Xml I tossi-sl in my hi-il nnil 4li'i-uint . . . . . . . . . . . . il lI'tblIIlIt'tl tII't'2lIIl. ffrnm the' iNll1fI IlI01y'-X' Of U'H1'i1ln Horn, Allflllllfl Vwlfir pow! of y1wniu.s- iwv'i1!ly lllllflllfl H-YJ T1l'f'Ilfl n1'l out of tht- saloon with my paiy I wus uppi-ozivliml hy zz l.0I'I't'lj' littli- mam. Ili-

Page 31 text:

Is there not a clue to the meaning in what has just been said? Could the converse of the beatitude not be stated thus: Unblessed are the arrogant for in their arrogance they miss most of what the world has to offer. The meek now, then, is the man without arrogance, without vanity,- not the rabbit-but, in short, the man possessed of humility. Blessed are those men who are possessed of the virtue of humility, for it enables them to know the joys -of living, to appreciate the manifold good things of this earth. The men possessed of humility-by humility what is meant ?-not, of course, the abject, fawning, cringing, hypocritical umbleness of Uriah Heep which was assumed to hide his evil. No, by humility, I mean the rarest of virtues, that virtue so out of favour in our time when only those pers-onalities as garish as a brass band receive favourable notice. I mean that virtue given in full measure only to the very great of this earth-a lack of arrogance,-a lack of all the vanities, both the large and the small. Humility is the opener of doors. It unlocks the world to men. Most of us go through our lives armed in arrogance, and protected by the padding of our vanities against every appeal to our senses. Arrogance closes the windows on experience, substitutes what is not for what is, ignores the tapping of envir-onment, and pulls in the complicated radar of the soul. Or I may put it in another way. Humility is a recognition that you form one-tenth part of a company of ten men. Call it by any name you will-this freedom from arrogance, this freedom from vanity-it is nonetheless an essential quality in the man wh-o would know the world it really is, in the man who would know his fellow men in the man who would inherit the earth. 7 It is a necessary ingredient of those who would be educated, for awareness is nine-tenths humility. VVhat is education for if not to develop wisdom? And what is wisdom but the ultimate humility-the recognition that we do not know? Knowledge is proud that she has learned so much-wisdom is humble that she knows no more. And how d-o we know humility when we see it-or the man who possesses it? Look for the man who does not scoff or jeer, who brings to each question an open mind, to every work of his fellow men a sympathetic effort to understand, and who hates only the poseur, the hypocrite. Look for the man who is at home in any company, who does not embarrass the rich by flaunting his poverty, nor antagonize the poor by a depreciation of wealth, who does not outrage the educated by boasting his ignorance, nor affront the uneducated with contempt, who does not insult good company with bad manners, nor try to overawe the humble with elegance. Twenty-seven