Climbing With Humility

I first learned how to pray—and the value of humility—in Christian Science Sunday School.

Once, when I was seven or eight years old, I was in trouble and humbly turned to God. My older brother and his friend had invited me to join them in a joyride down a hayfield strewn with piles of newly cut hay. Speeding down the hill in a car, we plowed through pile after pile. It was fun—until we reached the bottom of the hill. After they turned the car around to go back up, the rear tires could not gain traction but just spun and spun. We were apparently stranded, with no way out.

After watching my brother and his friend struggle to find a solution, I went off to be alone and pray. I remember kneeling in the hayfield and turning wholeheartedly to God, slowly praying the Lord’s Prayer that Christ Jesus gave us, which I had been taught in Sunday School. When I finished, I stood up and noticed that my brother and his friend were loading heavy rocks into the trunk of the car. They’d found a solution.

With the added weight, the tires dug in, and we were able to motor back up to the road and return home. (Much later, I realized with regret that the farmer would have had to gather up all that hay and restack it into piles.)

Two decades later, I found myself faced with a similar dilemma, only this time I was at the top of a hill with apparently no way down. As with the earlier problem, it was foolishness and a decided lack of humility that had led to my entrapment. I like to think of it as a remorseful “Jacob moment," as it reminds me of the wrestlings of the biblical patriarch Jacob: It forced me to grapple with something I’d done and turn completely to God. 

It was a bright, clear Sunday afternoon, and my future wife, Cindy, and I were driving along California’s coast, admiring the shimmering blue-green Pacific Ocean. We stopped to walk on the beach, and my eyes were drawn to what looked like a challenging but reasonably safe cliff for climbing. It wasn’t long before I had begun mapping out a route up to a high ledge.

While I had no experience with rock climbing, I had been reading about it, and I was relatively fit. After studying the cliff, I saw a path up to a ledge about a hundred feet above the ground. My plan was to climb up to the ledge, follow the ledge over to a less steep decline, and then simply walk safely back down.

I told Cindy what I planned to do and took off. The rock face was steep enough to make it interesting, but with plenty of crevices and outcroppings for my hands and feet. About fifty feet up, the face became steeper, and a few of the rocks were loose enough to pull out, but with my chest pressed against the cliff face, I was able to maintain my balance. After about ten minutes, I was standing on a two-foot-wide ledge, looking down at Cindy, and feeling pretty good about myself.

From this height, I could see the mountains on the ocean’s horizon.Yes, I had made it up, but I knew there was little chance of climbing back down the way I had come. The loose rocks I had encountered made it too risky.I stepped along the ledge toward where I had planned to begin my descent—but found to my surprise that the ledge narrowed to a little wider than a six-inch outcropping. About 15 feet further on, it widened again and continued on to the decline that I had planned to take. No doubt, had I been a more experienced climber, I could have managed it.

Given my limited experience, though, I wasn’t about to try. I walked back along the ledge to where Cindy could see me and called down to her. She smiled up at me, having no clue as to the peril I was in. Alas, she couldn’t even hear me.

I’m not afraid of heights, but fear inevitably crept in. It wasn’t long before I froze, unable to take another step. Now, I was really in trouble! Experienced climbers speak of maintaining their mental balance. Well, I had lost mine.

Feeling trapped, I turned to God and began mentally reciting the Lord’s Prayer, which I had prayed so many times before with healing results. However, I kept losing track of where I was amid the words. After several attempts, I did finally get through the prayer, which calmed me significantly, so much so that I was now able to listen for God’s direction.

Direction did indeed come, which at first startled me: The instruction was to climb back down the way I had come up. Are you kidding me?

However, the words had come to me with such clarity and firmness that I realized this was God’s voice, and I knew I could trust Him As Istarted back down, I was completely calm, to the point that I was sure there was no chance of falling. Suddenly, I was as nimble as a cat. When I at last safely reached level ground without even the slightest scratch, I was overwhelmed with joy and gratitude.

Afterward, it dawned on me that I had selfishly put Cindy in a precarious situation, too, by putting myself in danger. It was a sobering thought, something I should have considered before beginning the climb. Had I been listening to God—to that “still small voice” of divine wisdom the biblical prophet Elijah heard—I would never have attempted something so foolhardy. In the opening chapter of Mary Baker Eddy’s Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, we read: “Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition of Deity. The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes of dissolving self, and drops the world. Meekness heightens immortal attributes only by removing the dust that dims them."

To me, this means that we can’t allow the human ego to cloud our judgment. In order for us to more fully experience God’s control, it’s necessary for the divine—and only—Ego, God, to silence a personal sense of ego, and this is done through prayer and listening.

Today, I thank God for giving me the humility to follow His unerring guidance day by day. Humility is having the courage to pause and listen to God when we are tempted to forge ahead out of human will.While on that cliff, I had been, like Jacob, quote, “alone, wrestling with error,—struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains” and had “prevailed,” as stated in Science and Health.Since then, I’ve had many healings through my study and practice of Christian Science, each one an example of what increased humility can bring (see, for instance, my article “Employment, ethics, and putting God first,” published in the August 12, 2024 of Sentinel).

Humility moves us forward, while pride holds us back. And I continue to hold fast to humility as I climb spiritually.

(published in the May 19, 2025 Christian Science Seninel)

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