The Meek

As I read Art Homer’s excellent memoir “The Meek” [June 1994], I realized that my spirit oscillates between Orwellian despair and Utopian romanticism. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the ability to go back to the land is a city worker’s ace in the hole against economic slavery. But the homesteading days are over, and as Homer so colorfully reminds dreamers like me, few people would have the grit, stamina, or know-how to live on the land if it were still available.

Utopianism is like chasing a carrot that would turn out to be mealy if we ever caught it. Hoping for the future to magically deliver us from the present turns our attention away from the work that could transform our lives right now.

If I become aware of the habits that bind me to the past and exert my free will to ignore the carrots that would lead me into the future, I find myself feeling a part of the eternal here and now. I feel like the meek have already inherited the earth. And I know that it is up to me, the meek, to treat my inheritance with as much wisdom and compassion as I can muster.