Motes and Beams

Today is Buble Study Day. 

A small group of us meet once a month at Chris' house in Aston Ingham. We catch up over tea and homemade cake, then sit together in silence for five minutes, allowing ourselves to just be, revelling in contemplation of the Author of Love, who is my dearest and closest friend. Some who read this will think me deluded, or crazy, but that's OK, you create your reality around your Significant Other and I'll create mine, and may you be as blessed as I am by it.

 

We are examining our worldview around the Gospel of Luke and we are, after many months, wrestling with Chapter Six. It's serious stuff, Jesus gets down to the nitty-gritty with anti-capitalist heresy like, "Blessed are the poor ..." We rich are a tad uncomfortable with the implications of THAT, and so we should be. We concluded that if Christians paid as much attention to the eight Beatitudes as they do to the ten Commandments, we'd have transformed the world a millennia ago. But there you are, we don't and we haven't.

 

Today we are hitting up against 'Do not judge.' This is some deal, because we judge the behaviour of others all the time, usually with the intent of making ourselves feel better at their expense. I can see we're going to have fun with this.

 

The Carpenter takes the metaphor of a speck of sawdust and a plank of wood. How we delight in offering to remove the slight blemish that obscures true vision in someone else, whilst ignoring the the bloody great plank that blinds ourselves to our own faults.

 

I got to thinking about this. 'Do not judge' isn't a wish, or an aspiration, or a polite suggestion:it's a command.

 

Wouldn't it be amazing if we Christians actually obeyed it? 

Buddhists routinely practise the cultivation of a non-judgemental mind. We Christians could do with the humility to recognise this as a great spiritual insight, and do likewise. 

 

I talk to God all the time, and sometimes I even wait for a response. Here's one that is relevant for today:

 

"You can have judgement, Mary, if you want it. I'll start with you, shall I?"

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