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It always seems funny to me that the Bible translators translate “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” when in fact the best translation is “Blessed are the gentle.”

What so stunned me when living with my elephant was how big and strong and yet how gentle she was.  She would toss me up onto her forehead by placing her trunk between my legs and she would purr while I laughed.  She was strong and she was powerful – able to yank a banana tree from the ground in one pull.  But her gentleness was unmistakable.

I hope I am sometimes gentle.  I want to be. It’s not always easy in our culture.  Everyone is trying to get ahead and even the slightest hesitation in front of a green light will bring a barrage of honking horns.  People are not always gentle and yet I cannot help but notice how often animals are gentle
– so very gentle.

She had eyes which were so dark and brown that they seemed connected to the black hole from which the Big Bang emerged.   She was soft.  She was gentle. Knowing her helped me to better understand this piece from the Sermon on the Mount.  The gentle will inherit the earth because God will leave it to them.

I remember those elephant eyes of great gentleness and it reminds me that gentle means neither meek nor weak.

Keeping lit the candle in the niche of our hearts can be hard.  The holes in the walls of our   interior lives can let in the fiercest of winds which threaten these gentle flames.  We see around us the devastation of envy, greed, betrayal, unkindness and we begin to weaken like aflame whose wick is simply too short.

Lent is a good time in which to ask questions about what stone-eating worms of acidic doubt are eating away at the chapel walls of our heart.  To watch and be aware of these worms with teeth able to eat rock and bodies slithering through the holes is to be attentive to the care of our souls in a society and a church like those in which we live.

Asking for the blessings of our angels, our friends, our spiritual mentors is the way both to kill the worms and block the holes from the scorching and freezing winds of life which threaten that gentle flame we hold in our hearts in vigil for the coming of Jesus.  The coming of Jesus in our prayers.  The coming of Jesus in our study and thought.  The coming of Jesus in our sacraments and the final coming of Jesus in the end of days.

Until then we wait, tending to that little flame lit by life and for which we are responsible until life is transformed for us into a different source of light, life and love.  This is hard work.  Tending our gentle flame is so important and is an act of hospitality to the self like the arms of the father to the prodigal son.  Jesus did not say ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”  He said “Blessed are the gentle.”  So different.  So vulnerable.

There is a gentleness required for the acre of a candle flame – the soft touch of the wax walls, the gentle trimming of the wick, the soft hands around the flame in a breeze.  This is the work of Lent.  Abstaining from chocolate or wine might just be another form of anesthesia.