Judge Not Less You Be Judged? Why Can't we Engage in Compassionate, Critical Conversation Regarding Religion and Our Personal Experiences

Back in December John Halsted wrote “TheFirst Commandment of Paganism: “Thou Shalt Not Judge” (and whythis is a problem)”, a brilliant, controversial piece that you should read if you aren't familiar with it. I've been thinking about the piece in detail for a few days now and decided there are some points that are worth sharing.

Actually that's my first point. I read the piece, I reacted to it in the privacy of my own mind, I straightened my thoughts out till I was happy with them and no longer in the position of sensitively clinging to them, and now I'm releasing them to a wider audience for their review and potential feed back. As a writer, this is a process I am intimately familiar with and used to.

First I write. Then, I adjust, review, and attack it with my own internal critic. I consider it's merit—and sometimes it's only meant for me or a small audience. Sometimes it's ready, but I'm too emotionally invested in it to stand critique.

Sometimes hours and sometimes months after creation, I release my writing for others to consider. I can of course continue to write and adapt my style on me own in a void without other input, but for the most part, I've grown the most in my writing and thought patterns through comments and suggestions from others.

I think the process merges perfectly with one's ability to evaluate others religious experiences.

That said let me drop a few disclaimers:

1   .Writing revision is not always done alone. Sometimes writing is done in teams or small groups where they limit judgment to help to improve the creative process and encourage each other to come forward with authenticity. To me, this is where/how we create safe spaces to listen to experiences of others without deconstructing. There is definitely a place in the process for safe space—I just do not belief this space should be the end goal or the default.\

2.  Not all critics are equal. Just because someone has feedback for you does not make it valuable on the face of it. I might encourage people to listen to all the feed back but that's not the same as incorporating it all. Even a qualified person may not have feedback that is relevant to your interpretation or experience, which is cool. Sometimes all we are meant to take from critique is a better understanding of what we emphasize and what others emphasize.

3.   There does need to be space between ritual and critique. Creating and performing group ritual is a leap of faith and trust. Creating solitary ritual can be a leap in faith and trust. Beyond that, ritual is a living breathing thing. It doesn't just happen and release immediately. It needs time to be and do. I've had rituals that felt like duds or felt stilted in performance but were powerful in return. Perhaps I wasn't meant to have my moment of the profound in ritual, but to experience it in pieces in my actual life. I've had experiences that were profound and continued to be deeply impacting for months afterward. How could I have given a constructive critique right off the nose? Further, though this has never happened for me, I am willing to believe that I could be part of a ritual with deep meaning for another that has no meaning for myself. And I am more than willing to perform work that is transformative for another with no benefit for myself, actually opening a ritual up to feed back so I know what another experienced would for me, be helpful to know what I'm doing “right” or “well” for them as well as myself. I would think instead of forbidding critique each group needs to state a time when they will be open to receiving said information. Or, if ritual is too personal to give feedback on directly, perhaps work-shopping past formats or generic formats for ritual.

We as pagans do not like to censor. We do not like to shut others down. I've often gotten the impression from pagans that we believe the judging state is a lower state of mind we have risen above. To facilitate this 'upward' movement, we tell ourselves lies like 'what does it matters if Bobby Q Crazy believes or does that in his practice?' he isn't hurting me. This statement IS NOT universally true and without critical review there is no way to discern which is harmless difference and which is dangerous.

To take from P. Sufenas Virius Lupus comment below John's writing he offers: “Three people see the same person walking toward them. A police officer describes them as "a mid-forties Asian male of average height and weight." A student describes them as "that quirky biology teacher who wears bow ties and sings Led Zeppelin tunes while doing labs." A daughter describes them as "daddy." All of them are right. All of them are interpreting this person based on their own experiences (or lack thereof) with them, their feelings about them, and so forth. If you started to criticize the daughter's description as incomplete or not the best interpretation because it's too personal and puts too much emphasis on her prior experiences with that person, and thus her biases and "orthodoxies" (so to speak!) that are based in her own particular context--i.e. the "echo chamber" of family life for her, her parents and siblings--how can that feel like anything other than critiquing her long history of experience with that person (who is her father)? “

I agree with his point, and in the case if these three perceptions all are true and acceptable and safe. While there might be further discussion with the daughter on what else “daddy” is or is not, and there might be discussion on what each job means to each person, no individual is wrong or should be scolded or whatever negative it is we're worried about happening.

I'd like to extend the example so I can highlight the potential for danger. What about the police officer's partner who saw the mid-forties Asian male of average height and weight with a weapon in his hand, who may or may not act based off of the perception of a weapon? Are we supposed to wait until the officer shoots and hurts someone to address his mistaken impression (assuming it's mistaken, which based off the three other witnesses who mention nothing in the man's hand, its safe to at least consider)? Granted in this scenario, there may be no other option, but this isn't the case in faith. We don't have to wait until someone does something extreme to intervene. We can not be so afraid to judge or interpret a person's experience that we don't step in when what the person is saying may lead to self harm, or dangerous action. Granted, we might have a long debate on what is harmful action. I suspect the pro and con modern medicine folks have a lot to work out before we can set real guidelines.

I further suspect that mental stability is very touchy in the pagan community and as such plays a complicated role in judging or not judging others experiences. Mental illness and the pagan community are not topics I'd like to combined into subject matter for group sharing at this point in my thought process because I'm certain to bungle it terribly. I will say that mental health and paganism has been muddy waters in great quantity because we as a community were misunderstood by the larger modern society, a problem the psychological community is still rectifying, but that doesn't mean that paganism doesn't have it's share of truly mentally ill people whom I worry we don't provide the correct support for.

Another argument I hear a lot to critically discussing religious experience is “who are you to tell me what I saw/heard/felt/know”. I am no one in particular. I consider myself someone with above average intelligence, good listening skills, and sometimes good insight, but I don't have like a special license or qualification for it. Still, we seek advice from unqualified people all the time. I talk with strangers fairly often in line to check out or while looking at items and ask them for advice on clothing or where to go to find X kind of food and do they like their dance instructor and tell me more about their home school program. I know this is all minor stuff, but I've had strangers come up to me and tell me their mother passed a week ago and they are having trouble dealing with it, or that they are pregnant they don't know what to do or that they're taking care of their kid's baby and their kid is into drugs and they don't know what to do. You do not always have to be qualified to help and sometimes as apparently was the case for these people who chose to confide in me, being silent was more damaging than sharing with another person.

What's key here is that I did not go to these people and demand they share and I never claimed authority when talking to them. They came to me and laid their situation out in the open with little more than a pleasant greeting to grease the wheels. People need and want feedback and will take it from almost anyone in desperation. I think the way we present the space to offer feedback, the polish of the feedback we give so it can be critical but not cruel, thoughtful but not condescending, compassionate but firm is far more important and interesting a conversation than whether or not we should judge others.  

Forgiveness and Guilt from One Faith to Another

For me spring is about freedom and life.  It's about energy and love.  My honoring the season change involves exercises like fairy joy bubbles, taking lots of photos of seasons' change, watching the progression of flowers' growth and learning something new about local flora and growing, if I wasn't moving yet again shortly I would be halfway through growing some flowers herbs and veges.  I go outside for walks and being grateful and I will be coloring eggs.  These are all my expressions of love and joy and being absolutely thrilled for the spring.  I don't think I can begin to put into words how sacred and joyful spring is. 

Now for Catholics, spring/Easter season (because nothing is supposed to be related to weather) is far more complex.  In my mother's case spring brings up a lot of concerns regarding guilt, forgiveness, and sin.  I suppose it's only natural, she's fasting right now in the lenten season.   She's meant to consider Jesus' sacrafice, and I know that Good Friday, the day Jesus was on the cross, has always been particularly hard for her.

As a child, I can remember being very confused over Good Friday.  My mother always took us out of school, whether we had the day off or not, which fluctuated.  We always colored eggs and baked sweet bread we would wrap around the eggs.  We would always refrain from using technology from the hours of 2-4 because apparently that's when Jesus was on the cross and you should spend time in quiet reflection. 

Everything about the time seemed so muddled to me.  Because this horrible violence is happening to the savior at our hands for our sins, but there's this deep excitement because on Sunday Easter is happening soon.  Without this horrible violence and betrayal there would be no miracle.  It's still very confusing to me, though thankfully no longer as painful.  Wouldn't the deeper miracle have been for the people to recognize Jesus and to save and protect him?  What could he have done with all that power if he didn't have to rise from the dead?  If he came for peace and a better world then how does this violence do anything but perpetuate what is wrong in our world?

It is a pleasure to me to not have to ask those kind of questions or have this worry that there is something deeply wrong with me.  I was horrified by so many aspects of Catholicism and not able to work through it the way other followers seemed.  I felt like I was bad and wrong twice, once for what happened and again for not being on the same page as other Catholics. 

My mom is still Catholic, we inevitably end up discussing guilt and forgiveness.  One thing she said to me that really struck me to core to our discussion was: "To be really and truly sorry and able to repent means that you won't do those actions and more.  So if you repeat the same actions again, it means you weren't really sorry and couldn't really be forgiven in confession."

To me, and I have no doctrine to back it up, we are most sorry for things we can not help.  I feel guilty and sorry that I have so much while others have nothing.  But what's the real solution to that, how do I "not do that again" or make that right?  Do I give up my position of privilege and join other people who are homeless?  How does that help?

I feel awful that two things I value most, my creative ambitions and my relationships with my family clash.  Each suffers from my experience with the other.  When I'm with my family, I think of the writing or the book assembly I could be doing.  When I'm working on my projects, I think about how long it's been since I've spoken to my family, but if I stop and have a word with them, how they will draw me away from the work I'm doing.  I feel torn between the two, and as if I must sacrifice or compromise one for the other.

I often feel morally compromised at my job, unable to give the best advice because it may look like the boss trying to dictate an employees affairs when really all I want to do is give the best advice in the most straight forward way.  To protect my own interests I stay silent, but it's not genuine to who I am or the most I'd like to give people.

I need/want/hope for compassion and understanding regarding these struggles and others like these the most.  Am I going to keep having these struggles?  Of course, the only way I know how to stop these struggles is to stop living.  That doesn't make me feel less sorry about them, or less like there is a sense of wrongness in our society that these are some of the choices and compromises we make. 

I might wish that if I were sorry for it, I'd be able to fix it or stop it, but that's not always my experience.  I think part of why my mother struggles so much is even though that's her doctrine, it's not her experience?  I think that's why each year we have the same hurt sad conversation.

 Beyond that, to me, forgiveness/compassion is a choice that we have to make to ease others and ourselves despite the fact that there may be nothing they can do to ameliorate of make the situation right.   We are all only human individuals, and singularly we can only do so much.  I think meeting people with both compassion and realism is needed to make the world a better place.  We don't have to allow wrong actions or be silent in wrong actions, but we need to see a whole picture of a person along with realistically what we can expect or do.  

 This idea that we can change everything that's wrong in our lives or ourselves is a great tool to critically look at every option we have and all possible solutions and I do think we need to be thorough in our search for self improvement.  On the other side we need to respect where each person may be and that we are imperfect beings in an imperfect world.  We would like not to repeat the same wrongs but sometimes, even when it's avoidable we're going to make the same mistakes.  It's more about what you as a person do next, than the kind of mistake you made to start.

Creative and Spiritual Road Blocks

I think I'm coming to understand why I was so bad at school. I spend two weeks intensely reading blogs and information. Each day I woke with a new revelation and prayerful thought. Every passage was an inspiration and each day I'd move forward with a new aspiration to do this, or do that or incorporate something else.

My time off of work is spent with me tooling around or with the mate and I going to the art museum and walking Big Spring and going to pagan coffee. I feel focused and energized. My prayers, meditation, and energy work has never felt so synced. I'm so connected right now, it feels like a new level to my practice.

And then yesterday, I go to sit down to continue studying and I realize I can't read anymore information. I settled down and I looked at it all but the words are just words now, not vehicles of comprehension or meaning anymore. I don't even know what I'm reading anymore let alone being illuminated by the words. This is exactly the same way I would dive into college classes. I would live in my room and breeze through the huge thick book. I'd feel so intensely alive, and as suddenly as that unquenchable thirst had surfaced in me creating reams of papers, productive reading, and artistic interpretation, it would leave me. And I'd be exhausted, worn thin and vulnerable feeling. All that progress forward felt so good, but the feeling afterward made me feel woozy for days. All washed out and hollow. I'd have to pull back from my studies and from my life to recover that me from somewhere.

My creative mind has been hibernating. Deep slumber perhaps in part so I can built a life slowly and painfully. I know these sudden obsessive bursts with leaping bounding strides forward are not how most people function.

I thought it was gone, and while part of me was sad, another part was relieved that I would be so deeply engrossed in my own world with my own meanderings either following a path no one else seems to see or recovering from weeks down that particular rabbit hole.

But of course part of me was sad. Because there's nothing quite as exquisite as when I'm working.

Now that passion is back. It's been amazing. But as I'm at the cool down phase again: it occurs to me this time around, probably because I am mid way through my work and I still want to progress with it, but that weak wrung out is strangling me, that these bursts I get are probably why I never did very well in school. We don't live in a world where someone can work as I work successfully. Often I've mourned that we can't work three weeks continuously and have five days off, but this time around, I begin to understand why we don't work that way. I feel a little bit like those pacing zoo predators right now. Every time I move towards my book or my studying, there's an ache that pushes me back, but I want to fight through this so badly. I'm my own worst enemy these past two days and I'm hoping that I'll be able to shake it off soon so I can get back to work.

So today, I'm lighting a few candles and setting prayers up to the Divine. My Gods, the ones I'm familiar with, aren't rulers of the creative realm or of productivity. I don't think we start praying to Gods to get things, so I'm not about to offer to Athena or Demeter now, but still maybe my guides or my Gods will do something. I don't know how to ride my creative winds, so I'm going to release it to my Gods and my Guides and hope I see my sails flaring soon. 

There are somethings in life we can do on our own.  As pagans, we spend a lot of time taking the reins of our own lives.  Often we follow the natural cycles creating the right time, right place ,right ritual, right relationship with our Gods and hopefully this will all build to manifest the right life for us. 

 I'm a strong believer in finding the right rythm for each person and how this will open our lives up.  Sometimes though, the right thing is to give it up to our Gods and our Guides and how to see something, even if it isn't the results we want.  Release, its something I'd like to claim that I do often, but it's not really true.  I only usually "release" because there are no other options.  I hold and I chase and when I'm fox holed like now I release.  It feels so good right now to let go, like I've done all there is to do and now I'm being welcomed back home.  I wonder why had to be pushed so hard to do it.  

Do you release your life to the Gods or to a Higher Power?  What does it take for you to do this?  And what does release mean for you?