Today I would like to add another term to my list of pseudo-virtues: Arrogant Humility™. This term goes on my list with the likes of Malicious Obedience™ and Vicious Charity™. An example of Malicious Obedience™ would be when I sent young dd outside to run laps (standard method in my house for reducing the excess energy required for fighting and/or other disobedience) and told her as she went out the door to put her shoes on. The next thing I know I see her running her laps with her shoes on…..her hands. An example of Vicious Charity™ would to be gracious and kind to someone who is acting like an pompous pendantic [Balaam’s ride] not because it is the Right Thing To Do but because by contrast you are certain that you will be the one to look good and WAY better than the one doing an imitation of Balaam’s ride. (Of course **I** have never been guilty of these.) And so we arrive at Arrogant Humility™….

I recently completed a rather large cross-stich project. Like weeding, I find needlework to be an occupation that lends itself to the illustration of “profound” spiritual truths. During the time I was completing this project I went on a spiritual retreat where I was privileged to have both time to cross-stitch without (much) interruption and access to a spiritual director…..whom we will call Soon-to-be-Fr. Puddles (because of his tendency to melt in temperatures greater than 75F). I was discussing with Soon-to-be-Fr Puddles the difference between “mortal” and “venial” cross stitch mistakes. He jumped right on the needlework-is-illustrative-of-profound-spiritual-truths bandwagon and suggested that this was similar to the spirituality of Persian rug making. Apparently, many rug-makers will deliberately weave a mistake into their rugs because “only God is perfect.” Can I get a collective “Awwwwww….isn’t that a humble thing to do?” from the readers? Maybe it’s the cynic in me….perhaps it’s the covetous sinner who does not want anyone else to have greater virtue than myself but the more I thought about this “humility” the more unsettled I became. I have to say that in my hardly EVER humble opinion, the “humble” act of weaving a mistake into one’s work is an act of Arrogant Humility™ because underlying that practice is the idea that unless we make a mistake deliberately our work is going to be perfect!? Puh.Leez. The challenge is to catch and correct your mistakes quickly enough (both in needlework and in life) so that it won’t damage the overall pattern. All mistakes that are swiftly caught and corrected are venial. Mortal mistakes are the ones that remain uncorrected. Often the stitches are very “close” to being correct but if you build on the mistake you eventually discover that no small adjustment can fix the problem and nothing except ripping things out and going back to where you left the road will correct the error. Surgery is the only remedy and if you can do that without the use of language that your mother wouldn’t like, you are a better person than I am.

I’m not sure how I got here since this does not touch on humility, arrogant or otherwise, but it does speak to the necessity of correcting our mistakes. I only know that if I do not include this quote from the preface of The Great Divorce (if you haven’t read this book….you must….I insist.) by C.S. Lewis I won’t be able to sleep tonight.

Blake wrote of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If I have written of their Divorce, this is not because I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I know what he meant. But in some sense or other the attempt to make that marriage is perennial. The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable “either-or”; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we would like to retain. This belief I take to be disastrous error. You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind. We are not living in a world where all roads are not radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision….I do not think that not all who choose wrong roads perish, but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find your error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot “develop” into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, “with backward mutters of disservering power”–or else not. It is still “either-or.” If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven; if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.