Humility

I realized that this is the essence of humility. There was complete absence of regard for the self in the way they lived. Either the work mattered or the person mattered. I had thought humility meant accepting that you did not amount to much, that you should always devalue yourself or your achievements when talking to other people. I had been influenced by the ethos of New College, at Oxford University, the essence of which is that you must never make your superiority to others apparent to them. This was essentially the English form of humility, which built the empire and realized, for a time, the prophecy that the meek would inherit the earth. But it was cant. Real humility, I learned from the nuns of Evangelismos, is not thinking yourself less than the dust. It is thinking of others so completely that you do not think about yourself at all (Peter France, A Place of Healing for the Soul: Patmos, Copyright 2002, Atlantic Monthly Press).

5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:5-11, NKJV).