Early Morning Thoughts

It has occurred to me lately that Charity has many facets to it.  One of those facets is gentility.  

I look back on a time when I experienced this gentility in a beautiful way.  It happened in my "formative" years of late teens to early twenties.  I consider it a gift and a sign.  It has sustained a hope in me that might not be there today if I had not experienced it then.

I went to a small, liberal arts college that studied the Great Books of Western Civilization.  All the classes were conducted as discussions around a table.  The college insisted that we dress for the occasion.  Women were asked to wear dresses to class and men were to wear ties.  We balked at first, like the "rebels without a cause" that we were.  But we began to see the logic of it.  And the beauty of it as well. 

Each class had a tutor to open with a question and also to facilitate the discussion that ensued.  And here is where the gentility of Charity showed its lovely face.  This tutor called us Miss and Mr and we were also to call each other Miss or Mr when we addressed one another.  It was odd at first, but then something happened.  

The first time one of those amazing tutors turned to me and said, "So, what do you think, Miss Martel?" I felt important....not prideful...just worthy of someone's undivided attention.  This man, who could have intellectually eaten me for lunch, was asking what I thought.  And he meant it. He was deferring to me.  This changed my perception of myself in a real way.  If this man cared very much what my thoughts were, I had better have well thought out arguments.  I had better be worthy of his dignified belief that I was important enough to him to be listened to.  I have not found that kind of charity since.  But I am thankful for it always now. 

The world I live in has become noticeably crass, boorish, competitive.  People use each other without a thought.  "Friendships" are made under the maxim, "How can this person be useful to me later?"  We are not deferred to.  We are treated with suspicion.  Our thoughts mean nothing more than a springboard for someone else's thoughts crowding ours out.  I don't think I am overstating this.  The gentility of charity is fast departing from our world.  And a whole facet of the Divine Life in us is going unnoticed, uncultivated.  There is no one to say that we matter.  No one is asking in charity what we think.  No one even sees each other anymore.  They only see the prize of power, prestige, acquisition, popularity. And it leaves you with an uneasy feeling that you might at any time be thrown under the bus if they find something better.   People use each other mercilessly.   It fills me with sadness.  

It is perhaps a vocation in itself to treat others with this specific kind of charity.  To find within myself that same gentility lavished on me by those humble and dignified tutors of old.  To actually LOOK at others and see the real beauty there.  To actually say, in all truth, with no condescension, "What do you think, Child of God?"  

Let us be ladies and gentlemen in the real sense that is proper to Sons and Daughters of the Most High King.  Let us love in all gentility and not "just talk about it".