by Don Huntington, Editorial Director

Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy word or lose thy self-respect. (Marcus Aurelius)

Today’s quote seems like strange words to come from a politician – especially from a Roman Emperor. The words remind me of Polonius’s famous words of advice:

This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

The words of Aurelius and Polonius have a powerful resonance for anyone who would live a virtuous life. Integrity must surely be one of the basic qualities of such a life. “Better to be poor than a liar,” the Bible says.

Marcus Aurelius was a great philosopher but during the last 19 years of his life, when he was the emperor, was he in fact able to live by his own advice? Aurelius raised a perfectly monstrous human being as a son, for example (as everyone knows who saw the movie “Gladiator”). Also, he was a terrible persecutor of the Church. Did the man who raised Commodus and who martyred Christians retain his “self-respect”?

Polonius, of course, never took his own advice. He was a blackguard and a rascal; a spineless tattletale, whom Hamlet contemptuously dismissed with the words, “...that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.”

I’m sure that Aurelius and Polonius would willingly have become better people if they could have managed it, but doing so lay beyond their reach. In that respect, they are just like I was for most of my life. I couldn’t live up to the standards of my own philosophies any better than they could. I discovered, however, that the powers of Heaven are available to help me live justly and joyfully in this world.

Another part of the diminished life that I seem to be escaping is any sense that my life is a meaningless existence. George Eliot wrote the moving words:

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

In a movie with an improbable plot called Life Stinks, Mel Brooks and Leslie Ann Warren portray a couple of street people who reach the bottom of life’s barrel. He is in an apparently fatal coma in the hospital and she comes to him and, bending over him, tells him that life is wretched, but with occasional moments of beauty. “That’s what life is. Just a bunch of moments,” she says. “Most of them are lousy, but once in a while you get a good one.”

I think a lot of people live life at that level – enduring their awful jobs and their wretched lives for the sake of the few moments of beauty that come along. The possibility is always held out to us, however, of living life with a quivering sense of destiny that opens our eyes to the reality of the grace in which we can live and move. Unlike George Eliot in today’s quote, I’m getting better these days at being able to see the golden moments as they come rushing past me.

I don’t merely have moments any more – I have months running away into years. I give my life away to Him each morning and He always gives it back to me “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over,” to use the Master’s own words.

The universe does not require me to preserve my integrity intact, or to meet any other standard. What is required is that each day – each moment, insofar as I can do so – I must surrender myself into the hands of God. He takes my life from me; then He gives it back to me.

I’m so grateful for the freedom that is mine in this life that I’m now living; I’m thankful for the power to fight against the dark side of my character – sharing His integrity with me. By His strength I will not break my word; with His help I will be true to myself. God helping me, I WILL NEVER turn back to the diminished life I lived for so many years!°

Dr. Don Huntington
Editorial Director
don@110mag.com