Nuturing a Nonjudgmental Stance

Four years ago we had a terrible winter storm barrel through New England in October, when the leaves were still on the trees.  The unfortunate result of this, aside from thousands of people being stranded without electricity, heat and water for almost 2 weeks, was the loss of hundreds of trees.

Due to the unbearable weight of the nearly 2 feet of heavy, wet snow on top of the leaves, many enormous trees just fell right out of the ground- stump and all.

This was not true for all trees though.

This one, in the picture above, is a tree I walk by 2 times a day, 5 days a week on my way to and from work.  And in that terrible storm, this tree lost nearly half of it's core trunk.  It just split right off, and never grew back.  The miraculous thing is, the tree lived.

This left me in awe- still does each time I walk by it. 

Here's the funny thing though, just a couple of months ago, I was able to feel awe for a tree, but when it came to my fellow human-being at that time, I was caught up in critical judgments with little space for a compassionate stance.

Two months ago I was reflecting on the 20 year anniversary of the death of an important someone in my life who died of AIDS.  The person died in 1995, and I was a ripe 18 years-old.  As you can imagine, this experience shaped me in ways that are still unfolding.  Yet this year, I found myself in a pretty judgmental and righteous place about it for the first time.

As the anniversary was going by, I began to reflect on people in my life who I knew close up or at a distance who had had tragedy befall them too (experiences like being told they have a 90% chance of dying), yet somehow they seemed emotionally untouched by the experience. 

Untouched in the sense that, from the outside, it did not appear that the trauma of the experience gave them the gift of a wider more balanced perspective on life.  It did not appear to move the individual to a greater sense of gratitude for the small things in life, or the things that really matter. It seemed the miserable people stayed miserable.  And two months ago, I was questioning: How is that possible?!

This was not a compassionate questioning though.  I was looking down my nose with judgment.

Looking back, I feel some shame about my righteous indignation because that position is not in line with my over-all values.

As of late I have been visiting and re-visiting Omega Founder, Elizabeth Lesser's book Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow.  It has been helpful to read about the unbelievably dark places we as human beings can go, whether voluntarily or by force of life circumstance.  This spiritual reading seems to have softened me again back into the direction of compassion rather than judgment.

What has been particularly helpful though, is to remember that not all of us re-emerge from that darkness.  For some of us, the darkness takes us down.  And perhaps, just like the trees in that winter storm 4 years ago, there really is no place for judgment here.  Some will survive with their broken limbs exposed to the world, some will not.  And maybe, it is just a select few who will actually thrive. 

Maybe it is actually a smaller selective group who move through trauma and tragedy by moving down into the dark abyss like the rest of us, but they then re-emerge stronger, wiser, braver than before.

There is a movie that came out several years ago now called Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carrey and Morgan Freeman as the character of god.  A scene from that movie that always stuck with me was Morgan Freeman's description of a miracle.  He says a modern miracle is not defined by something akin to the biblical parting of the Red Sea, but rather more like a single mother who is working 2 jobs and still finds time to drive her child to soccer practice or help with homework.  That's the true miracle he says.  Which leaves no room for judgment on the parent who doesn't or cannot.  

In this case, the exception does not prove the rule.  We can stand in awe of the  tree that survives a terrible storm despite all it lost and still produces gorgeous fall foliage, but we do not stand in judgment of the fallen tree beside it.

Instead, we offer compassion, we mourn, and we believe, with our whole hearts this one paradox: despite the fact that some of us may survive a tragedy, some of us will not, and a select few will thrive, each experience is still valid and valuable.  Because, as the famous saying goes, no [hu]man is a an island. The truth is, we have opportunity to break-open as Elizabeth Lesser suggests from not only our own difficult times, but also those of others.  That is the gift of an inter-connected universe. 

Individuals, families, communities, countries, and even planets have an opportunity to thrive in compassion, wisdom and bravery from the tragedy that befalls others.  Which means, if we can continue to nurture a nonjudgmental stance of others, it is possible to manifest learning and growth from the trauma and darkness of others.  If that is not a miracle, I don't know what is.