"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth."--Jesus"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are--no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought"--Jesus in Matthew5:5, The Message
Meek? There is not much place for meekness in today’s world filled with clinching teeth, competitive grips and running and living on empty. I’m not even sure many of us have the word “meek” in our everyday vocabulary. Fewer still, seek to live with meekness as one of their most wanted characteristics. We want to be thin, smart, important, wealthy and successful. But who really wants to be meek? We train for our roles in life but we do not train to develop characteristics such as being meek.Yet, Jesus again, smears clean our programmed ways to be happy by telling us that meekness is where the action is. Somewhere along life’s way, we have to stop and look in the mirror for mirrors rarely lie. When we look at ourselves and our inner world—and see if the speed in which we are living; our busyness and our successes are really working for us? Meekness is really an invitation to live another way—perhaps a whole other way. To live the life we secretly long for, we need to have our old programs for “”how to be happy” stripped. We need a new way to live. This is precisely what Jesus does in the Beatitudes. These short statements are all invitations to live well and live with a better goal in mind.But what does meekness look like, smell like and feel like in a world where power, control and dominance are our unholy trinity we live with in our daily lives?Becoming meek is becoming who you really are without the façade of power, position and influence.You’ve noticed I’m sure, like I have, how people seek to impress us with their status. Becoming meek is letting go of all self-aggrandizing statements which tout, “I’m the leader in my field.” “I won this award.” “I have 5,000 followers on social media, so I am really someone important.” You lay down your efforts to say you are the best; have the answer or know the precise answer to almost any question posed to you. Meekness restrains self-promotion.Cultivating meekness is a necessary movement in how you posture yourself at home, at work; at church and by yourself. The world, work and even the church can call out the worst in us, not the best. We play charades. We become people we are not. We live as if the outside is what matters—it becomes, perhaps, all that matters. We re-enforce the false self and wear lots of armor to hide what is really inside. Meekness flushes out what is inside and holds it as honorable, true and right. [tweetthis]To cultivate meekness is to live in a vulnerable posture--exposing your true self and living out of the core of your true self without polish, edits and apologies.[/tweetthis]Meekness is living from the inside and moving towards the outside. It is recognizing your self-worth in God’s eyes—if no one else’s. It is living from a place of inner-peace and calm and moving away from the clanging of cymbals; the buzzers of busyness and the marching cadence which says, “Do something to be someone special.” Being meek is giving up the illusions that we have to impress someone—even God by our doings and our appearances.We live in an assertive world driven by extroverts in our churches and work spaces that make us become “high capacity” machines. Meekness chooses to listen to a different, Greater Voice, which says, “Stop masquerading. Live from your core. Move towards redeeming your false self and let go of hauling all your tips and techniques by the side of the road.”
To be meek is to be mild, not brazen. It is to live with the daily flexibility that says, “I want to walk ‘palms up; in this world not clenching and gripping people, opportunities and experiences.When Jesus said, the meek would inherit the earth—what is that suppose to look like? To inherit the earth means that when one is meek, you really do have everything at your disposal because you see the world and people in a different way. You stop using people. You watch them, learn from them and let go of them. In this way, we inherit the wisdom we need to live more simply and more reasonably and definitely more peacefully. To inherit the earth means we can actually gain the whole world but not lose our soul in the process—something that we surely need to learn how to do.To inherit the earth means that we can now enjoy—and learn to live less stressful; less driven lives. We do this by becoming our true selves and all of our life is this one precise journey---to become who we really are. “Naked, I came into the world and naked I will return.” Meekness knows this mantra and says it every day—perhaps multiple times every day. Questions for Reflection:1. Who is a person in your life now that you would say is a meek person?2. How does a person cultivate meekness in life, faith, work and at home?3. How have you experienced the meekness of Jesus?
No Time to be Sad
“Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”- Jesus in Matthew 5:4 
This is the age of superficiality. It is the age of skimming the surface of our lives without the notice of what is below the waterline.We are busy. We live fast and we are over-extended. There is so much going on above the waterline, how will we ever find the time to explore what is below the waterline? Just how does one stop and allow sadness to undo us when we are spinning all the plates of life, money, work and stress?Busy people send text messages when someone dies. There is no time to bake a pie. There is no time to give the hug that says more than words can ever communicate. We “Like” something on social media when we what we really want to say is that we don’t like it at all that you may be in a coma in the hospital and near your last breath. But a “like” or a text seems to do.[tweetthis]We do not mourn. We do not lament. We do not grieve. We have forgotten how to allow our sad hearts to bubble up to our overly made up external appearances.[/tweetthis] In Jewish culture, when someone died, people dressed in black for a whole year. That seems so endless—perhaps even ridiculous. We have parties and cookouts to attend. We have things to do; people to see and places to go.Yet in the midst of all of this living we try to do, Jesus turns the world upside down when he says, something very good will come from mourning that will in fact, bless you. I have to admit that sometimes, many of the teachings of Jesus seem like he is speaking in a foreign language—like Chinese. It seems so way out to say that there is a blessing that will come when we take the time to mourn. Is it Chinese?
[tweetthis]When we take the time to allow our sad hearts to catch up with our breathless lifestyle we soon see that we are addicted to pleasure.[/tweetthis] Ours is the age is numbing pain, not entering it. Yet, Jesus calls us to not only enter pain but to realize that when we enter pain—either our own or someone else’s that a sheer, unadulterated comforted will be ours. Jesus is calling us to enter pain, not try to go around it and more, he says, by entering pain, we assuage it—or God does.There is no escaping suffering. Sooner or later it is going to bite us all on the butt and drop us to our knees. When we mourn this; when we slow down and recognize that suffering is one of the great ties that bind us all together as humans, then we stand on level ground. There are no hierarchy’s in pain. We all stand low; kneel low and beg low, don’t we?This past year, my own family has been baptized in the cesspool of pain. The death of a child—our grandson broke us. Some people texted us. All the texts made us more sad. Can I just tell you that texting or the use of social media is probably not the best form of entering someone’s pain. When my father died, someone who I thought knew better sent a text while I was putting my suit on to take my father’s body to the grave. Rather than be comforted, I was outraged. His text broke the frozen grief in my heart. I wanted to text back, “I don’t need your text. I need you!” But like so many times, I swallowed that grief only to see if morph into a distancing and emotional estrangement today—years later.
Mourning is something even the church does not know how to do anymore. In our mega-ness, funerals are now happening in side rooms or no room at all. They are relegated to businesses that make a lot of money when we are most vulnerable. Some churches are so concerned with the lost, they have forgotten those who are lost in their grief. For many, the state of the church is worthy of mourning and lamenting.This saddens me and sickens me. I mourn about our society. I mourn about so much that seems to be happening so quickly in our country. [tweetthis]I mourn that we seem to have lost our way and I am wondering---if not mourning-- that we may never find our way again and like Rome, perish and soon. I mourn that.[/tweetthis]I mourn that so many of the folks I know are now the unchurched—a label once thought only reserved for those who never went to church. Now, I am seeing more don’t then do. I mourn that.I mourn over a lion that was killed this week. I mourn over hearing the words of a Medical doctor employed by Planned Parenthood choosing to use the words, “crush” when it comes to the skill that is now implemented in an abortion. I mourn that.I mourn that my own children cannot live in the same community and have Sunday dinner’s together. I mourn that often we live in different countries, not counties. For me, I mourn that we cannot get together enough. We never will. Times have changed. We will not be there for the birth’s of our cousins; not be able to celebrate anniversaries; not able to light candles or eat sliced, ruby red watermelon on the 4th of July. I mourn that.I mourn that my wife at 60 is having to work through the childhood issues of being raised in a Boarding School in Africa—that childhood issues become adult issues. I mourn that.I mourn that at my age I have found no way to slow time down. I only am a witness now of it's speed. I mourn this deeply. And with this mourning comes the realization that for me, one day soon, time will itself stop and I will pass like every other mortal life passes from this earth. I mourn this because I have loved my life.I mourn that I can’t call my Mom and ask her about what Dr. Oz (her favorite show) said on his TV show every day. She died. I miss her still. I mourn that. I don't know what Dr. Oz says anymore about anything. Does he ever tell us how healthy it is to mourn?There are so many things to mourn if we stop and and enter whatever it is that is happening---there is a deeper perspective. And this deeper perspective makes us love life, nourish life and protect life with every fiber in our body and soul. When we get things "out" something else comes "in" and this is what Jesus and all the Biblical writers called--peace. To get things out is to mourn whether it is the giving out of a tear, a groan, a sigh or a blog.I have never found any better words than these to help us understand the power of mourning: [tweetthis]When life is heavy and hard to take, Go off by yourself, Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions; Wait for hope to appear. Don’t’ run from trouble. Take it full-face. The “worst” is never the worst. Lamentations 3:28-30[/tweetthis] (I have been living in the Beatitudes of Jesus for a year and am just now blogging about the insights, gold and comfort I am finding in them.)