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St. Julian of Norwich is, perhaps, the humblest, sweetest and gentlest of English saints (around 1342-1413). One of the holy things she said was that we should seek to praise God at all times and in all places. She said that going to the toilet well was just as much an act worthy of great praise and thanksgiving to God as any other activity; if you can't thank God for that, then where actually do you start?

A group had gone away on a sort of camping retreat in wilderness territory to search together for inner meaning in their lives. One day the leader said he was taking them to a local shrine in a sacred place. It was a hole in the ground. It was the latrine. He pointed out that we all need reminding that we are part of the ecological cycle, the great sacred cycle of creation, beginnings and endings. We have become sanitised and very cut off from our soil roots.

Go into one of our forests or great woods. Pick up a handful of soil and look around at all the green and growing life the soil nourishes. Within each handful of woodland/forest loam live approximately five billion microscopic plants - as many plants as there are humans on the planet. There are also close to one million animals and 100 miles of tiny root hairs in just one handful. When buried in the soil our soil becomes food for many of these things. Growth, exit, death, decay, rebirth.

The word "humility" comes from the word "humus" which means dung (a more polite S word). Local allotment gardeners know a lot about the value of dung. Humus gets dug in, buried into the earth, disappears - but, without it, nothing is fertile for long.

Humility is about bowing low in reverence to every other human being; making way for them, acknowledging their presence and thinking of their interests before our own. Not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. We are not very good at seeing ourselves as dung so that others may grow and flourish while we remain hidden - even though in the life cycle our bodies are eventually quite likely to end up on somebody else's dinner table. Bowing low before others is what we are not very good at.

There is an old Jewish saying:- "The reason no one can find God any more is that no one is willing to stoop so low"

Tao, a Chinese view of the Wisdom of Heaven, says: "Yield and overcome. Force is followed by loss of strength. The low is the foundation of the high." It is the same.

The Buddha says- "Get rid, empty yourself, of all falsehood, this is the real dirt, in order to be filled." It is the same.

For Christians Jesus says: - "Anyone who wants to be great among you must be your servant," and, "unless you become as a little child (the smallest of the small) you cannot get into heaven." It is the same.