God is the sum total of all that is unknowable. Humility is total dependence on God for all things. Therefore, humility is dependence upon the unknowable. It’s trust in what can’t be known with certainty. It’s faith in what can never be grasped fully by the intellect.
And this, perhaps, is the reason so few of us ever come close to holding true humility. This is why so few of us really trust God. To have faith is to be held by the invisible. It’s to allow ourselves to be known by that which we can never fully know. It’s to let ourselves be loved and cared for by that which remains unseen, unheard, but only by its effects is ever experienced.
To rely so completely for every need upon one which can neither be held nor tasted is a feat to which few aspire, and even fewer attain. And so, this unseen love has invented others with skin, that giving and receiving may be experienced by each of us. This requires that we let down our walls, and trust those who seem untrustworthy. It’s to defend not, and to give all, even to our enemies. Who among us can countenance that? Who can attain to it completely? These are aspirations, destinies toward which we trek yet perhaps never fully arrive.
Our task here is to trust each other, to allow ourselves to be held by that which can be known and tasted, felt and experienced. Trust in each other comes first, before we can place reliance upon the unseen. At the end of the long costume ball of which our lives are composed, everyone invited to the party rips off their masks, and lets us see the unseen shining from each of us. Beneath our greatest enemy, and behind the mask of our ally as well, behind the masks of strangers and lovers, gleams love itself.
© 2022 by Michael C. Just
Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.
You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23
Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002
Four of his short stories have recently been published online:
Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)
The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW
I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October
Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within