Do not Judge, Or You Too Will Be Judged

I’m sitting in what can only marginally be described as an office for the next week and a half at Camp Ripley, Minnesota.  It is the first of two 15-day stints that I have this summer away from home.  My room smells like a dead mouse and the shower curtain was nicely decorated in intricate patterns only mildew can make.  Our chow is served out of what is called a “combat kitchen,” two times a day.  I am mostly a good sport about these sorts of things—after all, I have been in the military 19 years.  So, I threw my shower curtain in the washing machine and Comet’ed the fuck out of the shower tile.  I cleaned the dust build up out of my air vent but did not locate a dead mouse so I bought some Febreze and called it good for the next two weeks.  But even assholes have their limits.   After three nights of trying to console my three-year-old at bedtime because she wouldn’t stop crying for her mama, on the fourth day of being at Camp Ripley, my mood had turned somewhat dickish.    

On the way to breakfast, I ran into a young man who wanted to talk to me about joining the Chaplain Corps.  In order to become a Chaplain in the military you need a Masters level education and this Dreamer hadn’t even completed his bachelors degree.  “Come talk to me in seven years,” my amazingly condescending brain sighed.  Back in the office, I ran into Mr. Fricken Politics who wouldn’t stop talking about Comey (the leaker), Mueller (the biased), Rosenstein (the recused) and, of course, finding a way to wrap all three story lines up by tying each person back to Hilary Clinton (the bitch).  The asshole in my brain said, “Seriously, isn’t there a statute of limitations on how long people get to blame shit on Hilary Fucking Clinton?”  Around lunch time, I met up with the Comedian.  The Comedian tried to tell me that he once used a bathroom that had “Old Trucker Dude will be here at 3:42 for fun,” written on the stall door and he looked down at his watch and saw it was 3:41.  The jerk inside me muttered, “Yeah, ass clown, you got that off Dumb and Dumber. It didn’t really happen.”  Finally, as I was walking back to my room for the day, the Foodie caught up with me.  The Foodie began to describe to me every sanitation violation she found inside the illustrious combat kitchen. My already paper-thin patience was shredded as the Foodie followed me into the barracks that now smelled like a dead mouse that had bathed in Febreze. 

I don’t know if it was the smell of the barracks or possibly food poisoning from the combat kitchen, but as I laid down in bed that night thinking of all the annoying people, but in particular, remembering the Dreamer, Mr. Fricken Politics, the Comedian and the Foodie, something I had recently read on Facebook popped into my head.  It went something like this:     

“When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees.  And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight and some of them are evergreens and some of them are whatever.  And you look at the tree and you allow it.  You see why it is the way it is.  You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light and so it turned that way.  And you don’t get all emotional about it.  You just allow it.  You appreciate the tree.  The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, “You’re too this or I’m too this.”  That judging mind comes in. 
--Ram Dass

The next morning when I woke up and began to walk to my makeshift office, I took notice all the different trees around me.  Yes, some of them were tall and got the most sunlight, but I didn’t think of that tree as a selfish asshole.  It was a beautiful embodiment of God’s creation and I was glad it was a strong specimen that had risen tall.  Yet, with humans, I would have been envious of the person who was born into just the right set of circumstances to have grown so strong.  Likewise, some of the trees were small, but I didn’t think of them as taking resources from more deserving trees.  Rather, I honored the way the tree fought to continue to grow, even though it might not have gotten enough sun or was planted in rocky soil.  Other trees had strong, thick bark that may not have been too pretty but it made them tough against outside elements.  I began to consider why I had not taken this same attitude with the people who I had found annoying.  It was because, like the passage said, I had been judging them in some way or another.  I had failed to see them as being beautiful embodiments of God’s creation despite their perceived differences from myself.  I had failed to appreciate that their differences did not make them "less than."  Maybe the Foodie didn’t get enough love when she was growing up and she sought attention by looking for faults in the combat kitchen.  Maybe Mr. Fricken Politics had to fight for every resource he ever had, which made him have a tough exterior.  Maybe the Comedian grew up in a rocky environment and struggled to be honest with others.  Maybe the Dreamer never got enough sunlight which caused him to grow slower.  Suddenly, my annoyance dissipated as I began to see each of them as just being perfectly human--which means they are imperfect, just like me.   


Now, I am practicing turning people into trees and accepting them just the way they are.  Strong, weak, tall, short, crooked, warped, broken—all are perfectly well and good trees simply trying to grow wherever they were planted. I know now, that by judging others, we do not define them, we define ourselves.