I am finally back in my home town. After twelve weeks in the land of the free and the brave I have now been thrust unceremoniously into the land of the cold, the wet and the grey. Undeterred by the low temperatures however, I walked my daughter into the city yesterday, a bright and cheerful mecca for this city of incorrigible coffee drinkers.
On my way home I came upon a small cluster of abortion protestors. This surprised me; it is something one expects more from where I just came, than where I come from.
One diminutive man, who looked almost as grey as the weather, held a board around his neck with a 3D depiction of the developmental stages of the foetus. Another read the Bible and moved his lips silently as if sending up a plaintive prayer.
It was rather an understated affair, but it got me thinking. The problem I have with their stance, and their actions, is that they imply these individuals have so worked out their own lives they are now free and able to determine how others should live theirs. Wherever one stands on the abortion issue, there is a greater concern here.
Who has either the right or the ability to judge another’s life choices? Judging others implies we have all the information both about the situation and the person we judge. But is this ever the case? Is it even possible?
Judging others gets us into the ethically loaded territory of hypocrisy. Casting the first stone is problematic largely because it has a nasty habit of backfiring. It is an ethical knot that binds us - we, who judge - from which it can be difficult to disentangle ourselves.
The spiritual law of cause and effect, namely, reaping what we sow, karma or just the plain old ‘what goes around comes around,’ is not myth or fairytale. It is spiritual fact. What we put out there will, somewhere, somehow, sometime, become our own experience. It makes far more sense, if we desire peace and love, to watch what we ourselves do and say than worry about others.
If we truly desire peace, and love, if they are our ultimate goal, we will value them above all else.
