On the improvident judgement of people and full-bodied wines

 “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jer. 17:10)

“If we are on the watch to see our own faults, we shall not see those of our neighbour. It is folly for a man who has a dead person in his house to leave him there and go to weep over his neighbour’s dead.” (Saint Moses the Ethiopian, The Sayings of Abba Moses)

“To laugh often and much;/ to win the respect of intelligent people/ and the affection of children;/ to earn the appreciation of honest critics/ and endure the betrayal of false friends/ to appreciate beauty;/ to find the best in others;/ to leave the world a bit better/ whether by a healthy child,/ a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;/ to know even one life has breathed easier/ because you lived here./ This is to have succeeded.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, To Laugh Often And Much)

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison)

“How does one become a butterfly?' she asked pensively.
'You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.'
'You mean to die?' asked Yellow, remembering the three who fell out of the sky.
'Yes and No,' he answered.
'What looks like you will die, but what's really you will still live.” (Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers)

This is about that infinitude of shortcomings we hold together in common

Next to the cold and heartless ‘Machine’, the apparatus, or however else we might define it, I have feared the improvident judgement of people. Those who would make it sport to wipe out another human being. We have seen before how this can happen in any number of terrible ways. To diminish someone, to make the effort to annihilate them for a past failing or mistake, is to effectively shoot down their hopes and dreams. It is a dreadful thing to ‘kill’ someone’s spirit. We are not speaking here of ignoring felonies. No, this is about that infinitude of our shortcomings, frailties and weaknesses, we hold together in common. Other times in the rush to judge our neighbour, to cancel them, we are wanting to avoid looking into our own motivations. The founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, put it simply: “[t]hinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” Who has not envied? Who has not fallen victim to lust or has not committed adultery in their hearts? Who has never lied? Who has not borne false witness? Who has not gone after false idols? Who has failed to practise compassion or has walked away from the poor? Who has not been bitter or angry? Who has not used words they have later regretted? Who has not betrayed their creed and has not done so on a daily basis? So before I [one Jeremiah] cast the ‘first stone’…

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23)

Should we be honest enough to admit it

If our most secret thoughts, our hidden fetishes and past misdemeanours, were to be suddenly revealed to the entire planet, as could well happen in the future, how many would survive the ‘shaming’? Many of us, should we be honest enough to admit it, would be ‘cancelled’. How awful is that word in its present context. Nowadays, The Emperor’s New Clothes (1837), Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known folktale of vanity and [literal] exposure, has taken on new more frightening dimensions. Propaganda also plays an enormous role in any appropriation of a group of peoples to shape their values and thoughts, “engineering consent”, Edward L. Bernays writes in his ground-breaking study Propaganda (1928). The compelling irony of it all, like most things, ‘cancel culture’ one way or another, has been with us for a long time. As a burgeoning political ideology probably from the late 1940s and 1950s but in practice long before with unspeakable results. And it will manifest anew in a variety of guises every time we refuse to forgive or to act in charity, till that ‘beastly’ hour when the few will determine the fate of the many. You don’t need to be a prophet to know this.

“Horror the state of mind of a person whose participation in speech is threatened. The power which exceeds the capacity of interlocution resembles night.” (Edmund Burke)

If there is any modicum of infallibility in the world

We have all suffered those very bad moments when our vocabulary lagged far behind what our minds and hearts sought to say. In our younger years, when we were “green in judgement”, even our best and most noble ideas could inevitably be held hostage to banality. Our personal beliefs might also have been clumsily and embarrassingly expressed in overused formulaic cliches. There might be some to the manor born, indeed, but none are born unerring. The influential social scientist Joseph Grenny, sums it up wonderfully when he says: “I believe that the measure of my soul is my capacity to love imperfect people.” To  wake up one morning, or worse still to go to bed one evening with revenge planned in the heart against someone who has made a mistake, is bordering on madness when your own life could unexpectedly come to an end during the night. How many ‘perfect’ people do we know? I like what the mischievous Salvador Dali has said: “[h]ave no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.” If there is any modicum of infallibility in the world, it is to be found in the lessons of history. 

“I do not speak Hebrew, but I understand that it has no word for ‘history’. The closest word for it is memory.” (David Miliband)

“Night Shepherd” (Image by Eleni Michael)

We are especially drawn to the ocean

I have in recent years learnt to love to take long walks. Especially on the shorelines of the Pacific Ocean and the loaded-with-stories streets of unfamiliar cities. We are all inspired by different landscapes, in the same way to painters and architects. There is, however, something unique when it comes to water. Who doesn’t find at least some momentary peace looking out on the deep-sea or walking along its beaches. I remember reading that we are especially drawn to the ocean for the reason that the “watery” environment takes us back to our mother’s womb [human foetuses still have “gill-slit” structures in their early stages of development]. The fact, too, that our bodies even as we age are made of a high percentage of water plays its own part. This might be the reason why we are also drawn to the stars given that many elements in the human body were made in a star and even in supernovas. But I have digressed. On these walks by the sea I have preached my ‘finest’ sermons to myself [to the wind, that is], or to the rocks, or to the driftwood, and there are the mutts, as well, which go after my ‘walking stick’. Sometimes we do our best work, we are at the peak of the mountain, when nobody is looking. We must not become overly sad that we won’t be seen or heard when we have been on fire. How many saw Saint John of the Cross writing the Spiritual Canticle? “The murmuring solitude,/ The supper which revives, and enkindles love.” Few things in the world can compare to the power and rapture of a ‘yielded’ invisibility. And what is more, for the astonishing audience it might draw. 

“Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.” (Job 4:15)

“Everything is visible to, The Invisible.” (Syed Sharukh)

Guilt can cause a huge number of problems

We will come against lots of adversaries in our life. One of the greatest of these, next to our ego, will be guilt. Above all when it is left untreated. Shakespeare would use graphic images of blood, literal and metaphorical, to represent guilt in his chilling Macbeth recognising it here and in other places of his canon, as a negative, annihilating, and ultimately destructive force. Guilt can cause a huge number of problems. One of these being inaction, similarly to fear it can paralyse. Our perspective of truth is at the same time blocked. “It becomes a device to protect ignorance”, writes Audre Lorde the poet and civil rights activist, “and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.” What is more, unresolved guilt [which we should remember to distinguish from conviction of sin which can be sweetly redemptive] can quickly lead to self-hate, which is also exhausting and isolating, as a result diminishing our ability to love. This is why it is a glorious thing to release someone from their ‘guilt burden’ by practising forgiveness. Let us not be a heavy chain of accusation around another human’s spirit. Jesus Christ spoke on the inexhaustible character of love and on the requirement of forgiveness if we are to make any spiritual progress in our lives: "[i]f your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying 'I repent,' you must forgive them" (Lk. 17:3-4). I know, too well, from personal experience, [and this from both sides of the ledger], that oftentimes this is not easy. Most acts of transfiguration, a change of “form” or “shape”, are demanding and ask for humility and the grace of heartfelt action. 

“Only a fool is interested in other people’s guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart.” (Carl Jung)

Those “transformational moments”

There are things, the deeper truths of our lives, that no one will ever know. Those “transformational moments”, which have in deeply profound ways, changed our lives. In my case it was ordination into the Eastern Orthodox priesthood, and then the agonising decision when I would later ask to be relieved of my holy orders. The reasons do not matter here, but they are those ‘existential’ type decisions that no matter how events might later turn out, will not ever be entirely resolved. Whole restoration, that being, to “return to its former condition”, is forever one step away. For those who are trying to let go of some of the heavy weight of their past and attempting to live a more peaceful or contemplative life, even in the world, the words of Saint Sophrony Sakharov are directly relevant here: “God’s revelation is not visions, but the advent of divine grace, which comes in stages.” We all suffer pain and loss. It is one of the normal processes of life and it needs to be lived through. It doesn’t really cost too much to be kind to each other. I paraphrase here the Coloradan counsellor Craig. D. Lounsbrough; we can decide to live in the “pieces” of our broken lives or determine to put them back together. Sometimes the cracks might still be obvious, but that doesn’t matter, they are the proof of our endurance and the marks of our battles. These are the things which make our souls beautiful like the full-bodied wines with all of their complex and rich flavours.

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Dear Lord, do help me to not rush to judgement, and that before I am tempted to look into my neighbour’s heart and motivations, I first pause to examine my own life and to be reminded of the unfathomable grace and unplumbed mercy poured out upon me, Jeremiah, the least of Your servants. “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” (Ps. 51:3)