Praus…

Praus is a Greek word I recently learned from my good friend, jmo. He mentioned it to me after reading my rant about meekness. Praus translates to meek. Here’s what jmo wrote me this morning and I’m passing it along. Enjoy.

Meekness is not something that has ever been taught in western civilizations. The word “praus” was borrowed from the military and relates to horse training. Allow me share a quote from this word study.

“The Greek army would find the wildest horses in the mountains and bring them to be broken in. After months of training they sorted the horses into categories: some were discarded, some broken and made useful for bearing burdens, some were useful for ordinary duty and the fewest of all graduated as war horses. When a horse passed the conditioning required for a war horse, its state was described as ‘praus,’ [that is, meek]. The war horse had ‘power under authority,’ ‘strength under control.’ A war horse never ceased to be determined, strong and passionate. However, it learned to bring its nature under discipline. It gave up being wild, unruly, out of control and rebellious. A war horse learned to bring that nature under control. It would now respond to the slightest touch of the rider, stand in the face of cannon fire, thunder into battle and stop at a whisper. It was now ‘meek’.”

So, friend, how well do you stand when others are firing rounds of hurtful words your way? How well do stop when your little voice whispers something is better off not said? How well do you respond when tweaked, torched, or even slightly touched? Have you become a man/woman who understands that power, as Margaret Thatcher said, is a lot like being a woman – “When you are one, you don’t have to tell anyone.” God, help me become more praus. Thanks, jmo. Good.

Live hard. Love harder (Thanks, Meeks)…