by Shawn Tucker:
I have often heard that meekness is not weakness, but I have to say that it is easy to see how the two go together. In the scriptures, for example, we often see the meek connected with the poor. When Jesus lists the Beatitudes He connects the poor in spirit, those that mourn, and the meek. Even in Elder Ulisses Soares' 2013 LDS General Conference talk Be Meek and Lowly of Heart, a talk where he says that meekness is not weakness, he also says that the meek have a "docile, tolerant, and submissive" temperament. I have to admit that those just sound like three positive terms for weak. To be meek is also to be teachable, and while that is not necessarily weak, those who are teachable must acknowledge a sense of their own ignorance, need, and neediness.
Needy, ignorant, and docile are not usually seen as attractive qualities. But in my opinion, to really get at the nature of meekness, we need to make things worse. To make things worse, or in other words to make meekness seem even less attractive, let's think about poverty. What I have in mind about poverty is actually something that C.S. Lewis says about charity and security. Lewis puts forward that "For many of us the great obstacle to charity lies not in our luxurious living or desire for more money, but in our fear—fear of insecurity." (C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity 86) What really seems frightening about poverty is the lack of control, the lack of power in our lives to predict and to bring about the outcomes that we want. Perhaps this is just me, but I think that what I find really frightening about the poor is to see how vulnerable they are. And I would add one additional frightening thing about the poor: their plight seems shameful. In the capitalistic, individualistic, hard-work-always-guarantees-success world that I live in, to be poor is to be a failure. To look into the face of poverty is to see shame and need and vulnerability. And I think that all three of those things are connected with meekness.
So to get to meekness, let me start with shame. My point-of-departure for this post is a fabulous TED talk by Brené Brown called The Power of Vulnerability. In this talk Brown discusses her findings as a social work researcher. From that work Brown concludes that shame unravels human connection. Brown defines shame as "the fear of disconnection" or the fear of being unworthy of being connected with others. She elaborates that a sense of shame is universal, and that while no one wants to talk about it everyone has it and in fact "the less you talk about it the more you have it." Brown says that a phrase that expresses shame so well is "I am not good enough." This idea of not being enough can be expressed as "I am not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough." At this point, my reader, you might want to note where you feel that you are "not enough." Of myself I would say that "I'm not quite smart enough, kind enough, obedient enough, and just not quite lovable." I would add that I am afraid of how people around me would respond if they "really knew me."
