It took a savage mental breakdown to get me into a rural Presbyterian Church in a small, struggling farm town every Sunday morning. I always cried at least once during the service.

I had become friendly with the pastor, a good and deeply religious man who loved his flock completely but believed every one of them, even a newborn baby, to be sinners. Then there was me.

I was desperate and quite alone.

I drove over the mountain every Wednesday to meet with him, and I can’t imagine how it all worked out, but I believe Steve kept me alive and functioning until I got more help. More than anything, I needed someone to talk to.

I was falling off the edge and had nowhere to go, and Steve, an authentic Christian above all things, set up a time for me to meet with him weekly.

He even invited me to the church’s farmers’ lunch, where the first subject was tolerance for people of color or farm workers.

He was wise and had a great heart, if sometimes a severe one.

“Steve,” I want to be more tolerant to people of color,” said one of the farmers, “but I don’t know any here in this town.” Steve was, for once, speechless.

Steve disapproved of divorce, and he cautioned me that it would be a sin to have sex with Maria after I confessed I was falling in love with her.

“Steve, my friend, “I told him,” it’s been many years since I’ve had sex, and the first chance I get, I’m going for it.” He wasn’t happy but didn’t throw me out of church either. I loved Steve very much; he was and is a great man.

“I’m a Jesus man,” he said, “you will be a sinner if you do that.” I smiled. “With all due respect, I said, “It’s too late. You are talking to a Jew turned Quaker turned lunatic…”

He smiled, which was rare.

We also talked a lot about faith and humility. I told him my life was so painful, and I could not understand why it hurt. Was that natural? I asked.

“Jon,” he asked, swiveling in his chair and giving me his most pastoral severe look, “whatever made you think that life is not painful? Who puts that idea into your head?

It isn’t only painful, he said. There is love and joy in the world. But there is always a pain.

We talked about that for hours, and Steve finally gave me his answer:

“You don’t think life should be painful because you are arrogant,” he said. “You think you are better than everyone else.”

Anyone who tells you that life should never be painful was lying to you and doing you no service. Not only is life full of pain, he said, ” but that is often what leads us to healing and wisdom, and contentment. After pain comes healing.”

Just think of Jesus and his life, he added.

These turned out to be wise and prophetic words, Jesus aside.

I remember this idea as being A changing point in my life.

This was the beginning of the process by which humility becomes a discipline and a way of life rather than a threat to success, prosperity, and domination. I will always be working at it.

I am not right all of the time. And I don’t have to be to be a good person.

I understood for the first time that there are many ways of doing things other than my own. That is a lesson still in progress. I am getting there.

There are other ideas to consider than my own.

I have no right to tell anyone else what to do, feel, or believe. That is a core article of faith.

To be humble is not to be weak. To be humble is to be strong.

I accept pain as the price for a meaningful life. I get joy and love as well.

To be humble is not to run a way from truth. It is to be truthful and understand my limits and shortcomings.

Steve told me – hint –  that to be humble was to see the world through the eyes and ears of Jesus or his father.

I told him I couldn’t do it that way; my God was still a work in progress; at the moment, it was compassion, truth, and authenticity. I want to do some good. It is still that.

I’m sure Steve wanted to kick me out of his office but bless him, he never did. When I got better, I got to take him out to a fancy dinner, the kind he probably thought was wasteful and sinful. He retired and moved away; I miss him in my life.

With humility, the peach began to come. I’m not in charge of anyone. I am in contention with no one. I don’t believe I am better or suffer more than anyone.

I’m not wrestling with anyone or looking over my shoulder.

I learned to accept pain as a part of my life, not as something I thought could never happen to me.

How could I have thought that I could get through life without pain? Was I better than other mortals? The lesson was profound. When I began to deal with pain and accepted it as a part of life itself, it lessened and often went away.

The other part of humility, I once read, is that – it might have been Steve who gave me this book – I wasn’t wrestling with anyone. I embraced what Joan Sittister calls “the path to right-heartedness in life” to live between the actual and the spiritual.

My grandfather called it the “righteous life.” In the old country, he was a scholar, a Jewish holy man. He ran a ma-and-pa grocery in the new government and sold fish and penny candy. Good men, he said, were righteous men; they did good.

I remember discovering the idea that it was knowing my place in the universe that helped me learn humility.

“We are neither its glory or its ultimacy,” wrote one religious prophet of the universe.

I am not important now and will soon be forgotten for good. Whatever we worry about now is a micro-speck in the universe.

When my head swells, that puts things in perspective.