Yes, to accuse another person before God is to accuse yourself, like-for-like.

People so gladly deceive themselves, so gladly imagine that they can have, as it were, a private relationship with God. But if you complain of your enemies to God, he makes short work of it and opens a case against you, because before God you too are a guilty person. To complain against another is to complain against yourself. You think that God should take your side, that God and you together should turn against your enemy, against him who did you wrong. But this is a complete misunderstanding. God looks without discrimination upon all. Go ahead. If you intend to have God judge someone else, then you have made God your judge as well. God is, like-for-like, simultaneously your judge. If, however, you refuse to accuse someone before God he will be merciful towards you.

Given the evidence,
We cannot help but judge,
Although the Judge sits there
And does not look to them
Or the one we accuse,
But into our eyes.

Revenge
as Comrade Zero takes pains to observe
is reflexive.

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged.

Abbot Joseph asked Abbot Pastor: Tell me how I can become a monk. The elder replied: If you want to have rest here in this life and also in the next in every conflict with another say: Who am I? And judge no one.

Each one creates his God when judging.

In Matthew, this warning is given point with the parable of the splinter in one’s brother’s eye (vv. 3-5), while in Mark it is part of a series of sayings which calls for the attentive hearing and understanding of parables (vv. 22-25, cf. v. 13). The application of the saying therefore differs according to context, yet in both cases it is used without explanation, as if it would be readily taken in. (p. 123)

At 27:8, the Hebrew text of Isaiah is difficult of interpretation … but the Targum presents quite a free paraphrase at this point in order to convey a clear meaning: “In the measure you were measuring with they will measure you…” … The use of the maxim in the Targum strengthens the case for the argument that it was current in the time and language circle of Jesus … (p. 124)

“So I agree with you—the mirror first, before we start pounding the gavel!”

We must first cast out the beam of untouchability from our own eyes before we attempt to remove the mote from that of our ‘masters’.

We see colours but not wavelengths. This well known fact must nowhere be taken to heart more seriously than in psychology. the effect of the personal equation begins already in the act of observation. One sees what one can best see oneself. Thus, first and foremost, one sees the mote in one’s brother’s eye. No doubt the mote is there, but the beam sits in one’s own eye—and may considerably hamper the act of seeing.

A church that only condemns,
a church that sees sin only in others
and does not look at the beam in its own eye,
is not the authentic church of Christ.

We take beautiful walks together. It is very beautiful here if one only has an open and simple eye without any beams in it. But if one has that, it is beautiful everywhere.

Do not judge men; love them. But you must not reveal what is holiest in your hearts to people who are not ready for it.

When he told us not to cast our pearls before swine, for example, it was not to be mean but because he knew that swine cannot digest pearls; they do them no good. We, too, should have the good sense to refrain from giving people truth that they are not ready to receive, for it will do them no good.

We can save ourselves a lot of distress and accusation by knowing when, where, to whom, and how to talk about spiritually mature things.

… knock; seek; ask. But you must read the fine print. “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” That’s the catch. If you can catch it it will catch you up, aloft, up to any gap at all, and you’ll come back, for you will come back, transformed in a way you may not have bargained for—dribbling and crazed.

The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.

I can’t bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
might have given him a stone.

So we must come out of ourselves, out of our vocations, our of our environments and also be useful in human fashion somewhere and somehow. Everyone can find that. He must merely seek, wait, and begin small … So seek quietly and modestly where God can use you and do not become tired in waiting and seeking. For if the word of Jesus—”Whoever seeks will find”—is correct anywhere it is here. You will discover where you can serve and experience the blessedness of this service. (p. 92)

“Ask … seek … knock …” On the power of this saying we may turn to strangers when we need someone and ask whether one of them wants to be a neighbor to us in the matter we raise. (p. 106)

Rebbe Wolfe: A boy your age must never be ashamed to ask, there is no shame in receiving. What others give you isn’t theirs anyway. But that is not all. I also wanted to teach you that a boy your age must not rely too much on miracles.

[good story to go with the quote]

All who seek you
test you.
And those who find you
bind you to image and gesture.

I would rather sense you
as the earth senses you.
In my ripening
ripens
what you are.

I need no tricks
to prove you exist.

Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of himself. Ask and seek and your heart will grow big enough to receive God as your own.

“Ask,” “seek,” and “knock;” there is something very definite about that. Those words represent three very real stages in the life of prayer corresponding to a steady growth and enrichment of the soul’s encounter with God. (p. 9)

But this is the real life at which all our education in prayer has been gently aiming, life lived in the atmosphere of God beyond entreaty and search. We leave those off when we are at home.

Home—When we realize all that that image implies, don’t prayers merely asking for help or comfort seem a bit mean and ungenerous? True, they are answered out of the boundless generosity of God, but our aim ought to lie beyond, in a life lived in Him … All that matters is God, not ourselves. (p. 10)

Ask for what you need, not for what you want. What you need will be given to you anyway, but if you ask for it, the gift will go deeper.

… Scripture tells us that God is more willing to give to us than fathers are to give to their children (Matt. 7:11). To some this seems mere sentiment, and exaggerated statement, made in a poetic hour. To others, who have cried in vain for things that appeared certainly good, it seems mockery. If God is willing to give, why doesn’t He? What hinders Him? How can He be willing to give, when, omnipotent, He still withholds?

Why must the gate be narrow?
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.
To come into the woods you must leave behind
the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes
You must come without weapon or tool alone
expecting nothing, remembering nothing
into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf.

Go by the narrow road
Along the creek, a burrow
Under shadowy trees
Such as a mouse makes through
Tall grass, so that you may
Forget the wide road you
Have left behind, and all
That it has led to. (p. 135)

“To the Holy Spirit”

By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate. (p. 209)

“In Rain”

I see the path
again, a dark way going on
through the light. (p. 267)

For truth is something to be lived, else it might as well not be. And how shall a mind get on finding more truth save as it takes direction from what it gets; how make farther advances when it tramples what it has by neglect? You come upon the hither side of a vast intricate forest region and your problem is to find your way through it. Will you stand there … speculating forty years expecting first to make out the way?

No, there is no fit search after truth which does not first of all begin to live the truth it knows …

There is a way for disolving any and all doubts—a way that opens at a very small gate but widens wonderfully after you pass.

… do the first thing first. Say nothing of investigation till you have made sure of being grounded everlastingly and with completely whole intent in the principle of right doing as a principle.

… For this is what Christ calls the single eye, and the whole body is inevitably full of light. How surely and how fast fly away the doubts even as fogs are burned away by the sun.

No one compels you, traveler;
this road or that road, make your choice!
Dust or mud, heat or cold,
fellowship or solitude,
foul weather or a fairer sky,
the choice is yours as you go by.
But here if you would take this path
there is a gate whose latch is love,
whose key is single and which swings
upon the hinge of faithfulness,
and none can mock, who seeks this way,
the king we worship shamelessly.
If you would enter, traveler,
into this city fair and wide,
it is forever and you leave
all trappings of the self outside.

     The many want the Jesus Christ whose name is a secret password into eternal bliss. The few will allow Jesus ’ gospel to actually infect the way they think about, talk about, and regard other people.

The Strait Road—to live for others in order to save one’s soul. The Broad—to live for others in order to save one’s self-esteem.

In every instant, two gates,
One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.
Mostly we go through neither.

Mostly we nod to our neighbor,
lean down to pick up the paper,
go back into the house.

Should I have led a more simple life?
Have my ambitions been worthy?
Has the wind, for years, been talking to me as well?
Somewhere, among all my thoughts, there is a narrow path.

It’s attractive, but who could follow it?

The church’s teaching power is likened to a popular democracy as though the number of those who speak were worth more than the rightness of what is said and it is forgotten that mediocrity will always be majority and the courage of authenticity, minority. Recall “the wide way” and “the narrow way” of the gospel.

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
Strangely, it relates to what works,
but it is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,

Or profit, or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.

For many willfully join at the Lord’s table
When beckoned there to feast or to dine
But who among us will still be found faithful
When we are beckoned to drink the chalice of his wine.

Few be the lovers
In this painting
Few be the lovers
Of the cross

The straight path follows an endless curve.

The air is unfit to breathe, the water is unfit to drink, the soil is washing away, the cities are violent and the countryside neglected, all because we are intelligent, enterprising, industrious, and generous, concerned only to feed the hungry and to “make a better future for our children.” Respect for nature causes us to doubt this, and our cultural tradition confirms and illuminates our doubt: No good thing is destroyed by goodness; good things are destroyed by wickedness. We may identify that insight as Biblical, but it is taken for granted by both the Greek and the Biblical lineages of our culture, from Homer and Moses to William Blake. Since the start of the industrial revolution, there have been voices urging that this inheritance may be safely replaced by intelligence, information, energy, and money. No idea, I believe, could be more dangerous.

Although the letter said
On thistles that men look not grapes to gather,
I read the story rather
How the soldiers platting thorns around Christ’s head
Grapes grew and drops of wine were shed.

Though when the sower sowed,
The wingèd fowls took part, part fell in thorn,
And never turned to corn,
Part found no root upon the flinty road—
Christ at all hazards fruit hath shewed.
From wastes of rock He brings
Food for five thousand: on thorns He shed
Grains from His drooping Head;
And would not have that legion of winged things
Bear him to Heaven on easeful wings.

Just because you’re in this country doesn’t make you an American … No … You’ve got to enjoy the fruits of Americanism. You haven’t enjoyed these fruits. You’ve enjoyed the thorns. You’ve enjoyed the thistles. But you have not enjoyed the fruits, no sir. You have fought harder for the fruits than the white man has but you’ve enjoyed less.

“It’s for the best,” my mother said—“Nothing can
ever be wrong for anyone truly good.”

Then on my head a crown of thorns I wear
For these are all the grapes Sion doth bear,
Though I my vine planted and watered there:

He who is aware of his sins is greater than one who can raise the dead. Whoever can weep over himself for one hour is greater than the one who is able to teach the whole world; whoever recognizes the depths of his own frailty is greater than the one who sees visions of angels.

Those people who put all their strength into Other-Power, and relying completely on it, say, “Faith in Other-Power, faith in Other-Power,” bound with the bonds of Self-Power, fall with a crash into the Hell of Self-Power.

If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.

Abbot Pastor said: If you have a chest full of clothing and leave it for a long time the clothing will rot inside it. It is the same with the thoughts in our heart. If we do not carry them out by physical action, after a long while they will spoil and turn bad.

The difference between the two [builders] is whether they put Jesus’s words into action. Wisdom in Proverbs too is all about listening to wise teaching and acting upon it.

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

Each one of us acts like the anti-christ when we hear the word and do not do it.

And the mist fell
And the webs clung
And the rocks tumbled
And the earth shook

And the thread held.

“Authority” does not mean to be a king, but by a firm and conscious resolution to be willing to sacrifice everything, one’s very life, for a cause. It means to articulate a cause in such a way that a person is at one with himself, needing nothing and fearing nothing. This infinite recklessness is authority. Those with authority always address themselves to the conscience, not to the understanding. True authority is present when the truth is the cause. The reason the Pharisees spoke without authority, although they were indeed authorized teachers, was precisely because their talk, like their lives, was in the power of endless finite concerns.