I’ll be honest. I’ve been struggling with judgment.
Judging people who judge their self-interest (their me) is greater than the interest of the whole (we).
And since judgment is divisive, I want none of it.
So how do I shift out of judgment? I know that in Truth, we are all One. I know that to live Love is to see everyone as they truly are — the loved of Love. I know that when I do this, Love loves us all whole.
And I know that if I judge, others judge me. And then we end up in the never-ending circular logic of me first. Which morphs into us vs them. Which is NOT WE.
So how do I shift out of this much more subtle — and seemingly justifiable — me thinking?
Prayer and poetry.
Today I find an answer in this poem by Wendell Berry called The Wild Geese.
Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
What we need is here. We see it all around us every day. But do we get quiet in heart and in eye, clear?
We humans missed the message: The earth is not here for our pillage and plunder. The earth is here to show us, every single day, how WE works, how wholeness manifests, how life is lived.
It may seem counterintuitive to get quiet after so many of us have spent so many weeks in quiet. It may seem like this is a time to speak true and go back out into the world and get things done! It may be. But it is never not time to remember that everything we need is already here.
Judgment is actually fear-fueled discernment. When we listen to Love, we discern not divide.
Hate is fear-based seeing and action. When we choose Love, we see as Love. And it is impossible to hate.
Change can often be the substitution of one divisive me-first agenda for another. A new version of the old.
But if we lean into Love instead of letting old fears drive the bus, we see that all we need for a new way of living is already here: Kindness, goodness, compassion, concern, caring, connection, conversation. These are Love’s tools. And all we need to do is choose them.
So how do we shift the pattern? Get quiet. Look all around us at the world showing us how. “And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.”
And what is here is Love.
Today, instead of judgment, I get quiet in heart and in eye, clear. And I will listen to the Love that is here.
To read a wonderful take on this poem by one of my favorite writers, please read this essay in On Being by Parker Palmer: https://onbeing.org/blog/what-we-need-is-here/