Suspending Judgment
Three links that trust what the body knows of neighbors and of art
Welcome to another Friday edition of PeaceLinks, a collection of online writings compiled for their interest in peace, cooperation, and the middle ground.
#1
In anticipation of July 4th,
at offered up this reflection on the craving of Americans for connection and moderation, contrary to headlines that focus on extremists:I think we’re more similar than not. And, even in our differences, I know we still crave connection. We love finding common ground. We care for our communities.
Our perceptions of one another are skewed by external forces, creating tendencies for us to dismiss, distrust, and dispute without much provocation. But, under the right circumstances, with the right messenger, I believe we can change our minds. Notice that the focus is on us, not them.
This isn’t about winning over our political adversaries. It’s about building opportunities to better understand each other by taking stock of our own biases. It’s about moving away from despair and stepping toward reassurance. It’s about being determined to offer grace before judgement. [italics added]
Read the whole post here:
Elizabeth ends her post with some resources to help her readers take action from the middle. This June 2 PeaceLink describes another organization with the same goal.
#2
Regular readers of this newsletter know that I enjoy unexpected connections between writers and websites that seem to have little in common.
Artist and senior Zen student
’s most recent post in offers a process for observing and appreciating any work of art. The emphasis is on slow observation and sensation, ending with a personal and changeable connection between the viewer and the artwork. To begin, “First, I try not to judge the work, not to worry if it is good or bad or great” (bold emphasis in original).I cannot help but wonder what would happen if someone applied Sal’s method of approaching art in the context of approaching an old friend or neighbor, as in Elizabeth’s Chicken Scratch essay. What if we approached each other slowly, giving time, suspending judgment, not worrying if the other person is good or bad or great or has opinion x or y. Would this be possible? What might happen?
Read Sal’s whole post here:
There is more in Sal’s archive that relates to the PeaceLinks theme — an essay on a gender-changing Buddhist figure, for example, or the question of whether the appreciation of artwork can be understood to create communities — but these two posts speak poetically alongside each other about what happens when criticism and judgment are pushed well below connection and relationship.
The principal seems the same for art as for interpersonal interaction. Both essays imply that we have the option to judge, criticize, and raise hot questions; and then both of these essays come firmly down with a choice of something else.
#3
And speaking of art — #3 today might not have struck me as a PeaceLink without the other two. We’ve been hopping on river rocks from Elizabeth’s clear theme of neighborly common ground, to Sal’s method of seeing art (which strikes me as a peaceful, hot-air-reducing method of seeing anything and anyone), to a poem about an artist’s change of vision. All three of these have to do with trusting what the body and its intuition knows, without judgment or criticism. (ok, yes - Elizabeth did some research to confirm her hunch.) The speaker of this poem sounds a bit vexed with his doctor, but behind that there is acceptance-turned-ecstasy with what someone else might call a disability.
The poem appeared in a Note posted earlier this morning by globetrotter
, who writes . I don’t know how he reads, writes, takes photographs, and catches flights at the same time, but he does it, and thank goodness. Thank you, M. E., for sharing this radiant poem by Lisel Mueller, from Monet Refuses the Operation (1996). Amen.Click to read the full poem:
Suspending judgement is rarely easy but always a worthwhile effort.