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"Do Not Judge Anyone": Desert Wisdom for a Polarized World
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January 20, 2026
This is a profound book that advances a deeper understand of why and how to stop judging, which is a central practice of the Desert Fathers and the essence of the crucified Christ. This judging that must be renounced refers to the actions of condemning and excluding (xiii) which is fed by a fearful super-ego's desire to control complexity (xii); thoughts of violence, rancor, and moralism (xii, xiv); and the addictive feeling of righteous indignation (xi). To achieve this practice of not judging anyone, we must rely not on our willpower but the grace of God (xii-xiv), a practice of discernment (xv), and contemplative prayer. Slater uses a range of scriptural and contemporary sources to advance this understanding and practice of not judging: he reviews the sayings, writings, and homilies of the Desert Fathers alongside Biblical parables and scripture; writings by Pope Francis, saints, and scholars of the Church; and references to Zen, literature, art, and other spiritual and lay stories and frameworks. NOTE: I especially love how the book is organized by the graces, which rightfully and sensibly feed into each other: Mercy, Peace, Acceptance, Compassion, Love, Discernment and Hope.
The key actions to grow a practice of not judging anyone, through trying and failing, include:
1. Pay attention - create inner space for silence through contemplative prayer will help you to recognize the passions which can’t be still; make way for the passions, feel them to the full, but without reacting’ (80)
2. Feel gratitude for the awareness of our sins and simultaneous unconditional love we receive from God
3. Ask: Who am I?
4. Overaccept improvise, and recollect - ‘the more we cultivate interior space and care for inflamed passions while they are raw, before they fester, the easier it comes to respond to life in a fresh and creative way’ (76).
5. Practice humility by going against the tendency to defend oneself and taking fault on oneself
6. Have mercy - ‘mercy as a fuller and more satisfying form of justice’ (82).
7. Discern (113)
8. Mend to Make New (140-143)
I must have over 300 tabs in this book, but I will try to parse out the ideas, references, and explanations that resonated the most with me:
1. The Parable of the Prodigal Son: Slater starts by making sense of a quotation by Weil through a powerful reading of the Prodigal Son, wherein the Father "suffers in innocence and so becomes the measure, the non-judgement by which the two sons can judge themselves" (3) and "gives expression to [God's] transcendent good, not by floating above the fray, coldly indifferent, but by his willingness to suffer, to empty and humble himself. His peace is not the absence of conflict by a stable presence within it. His equanimity is not unfeeling but able to bear tension, unwilling to force a premature resolution" (4). Where the sons judge each other and the Father and, through comparison, become parodies, "surly and hedonistic (younger) or stingy and righteous (older)," the Father, guided only by love and humility, represents a perfect balance and becomes "a clearing, a place of not judging where his rival sons can meet, where both sons are honored as sons when they least act like it" (142). On the power and pain of unconditional love: “When exposed to the cold a long time, our extremities grow numb and become frostbitten. If we realize how cold we are and come inside, the warmth that wakes our blood flow into circulation feels excruciatingly painful. But it’s the only way to melt and thaw. We may fear that suffering and prefer to stay number and freeze. The pain of remorse, of seeing clearly the nature and extent of our sin, how petty and selfish we’ve been, how we’ve hurt those we most love, can be excruciating. Only the exquisite warmth after so much cold, the cessation of the frigid wind, the awareness of being loved as we are, allows us to bear it” (99).
2. Attention: "A deepening spiritual practice demands sustained, unjudging attention to experience without evading or glossing over it... we can never underestimate our need to soak in and savor, to marinate in divine mercy" (17). "Sin [as a "festering of the wound" of original sin, which is "innocent suffering” and “arrogant” (22)] can only be known in the moment it's forgiven... it's the awareness of the full extent of our misery in the same moment that we realize we are loved, unconditionally, just as we are. Knowing we are loved, just as we are, while seeing keenly and with fresh eyes the nature of our fault, is what prompts us to want to change, from within and freely... from gratitude. Gratuity in response to gratuity" (14). With true repentance, we have "a sense of hope, even excitement, and feel empowered to change... it's the false judge, the Accuser within, who breeds despair and self-hatred" through "our attachment to a view of ourselves as hateful" (16, 18).
1. ***Contemplative Prayer: “A space of nondiscrimination… incompatible with ‘a polemical intention’… ross simply with things as they are, with our experience, just as it is, without judging or changing anything… not pursuing discursive reflection undergrads the practice of ‘not judging’ in the moral sphere… We cultivate distance or space in which our rage and punitive fantasies can come to light, and the needs below the anger be addressed. Remaining in stillness, what is not still, our restless mind and anxious passions, become visible”(32). “Because prayer allows room for anger to arise, before God, in quiet, it becomes a ‘seed of gentleness,’ the beginning, the first hint of a response to real or imagined injustice that is not reactive and obsessive but balanced and self-aware. Prayer involves an inner state of trust and surrender in which we allow all the sides of ourselves to come to light in the presence of an unconditional love, of a Father who ‘knows what we need before we ask’ and numbers every hair on our head” (33).
2. “In the early church, monks were seen as mourners, those who lament for and grieve over the terrible injustice and suffering in human life” (43). “We are invited to grieve over those who are ‘wicked,’ to grieve for the harm they cause others certainly, and also for the harm they do to themselves” (85).
3. “Clear awareness of how constantly the passions leak into our thoughts and key our actions would keep us from fixating on the faults of others. Even if we have not actively fallen into actual sin, we know and see clearly how the seeds of every sin lie buried within us; we are humbled, and refrain from judging… constantly holding in mind that we’re never seeing the whole story and always inclined to mask and minimize our own faults engenders a disposition of humble mercy to all” (52).
4. “attention is the rarest and the purest form of generosity” (83)
5. ***“Keeping watch over the heart, renouncing judgement in small ways throughout the day, prepares us to freely show mercy in more challenging ways when the occasion arrives” (89-90).
6. “in the prayer of stillness we develop the habit of not judging as we allow thought after thought to arise and dissolve without reaction, opening the book of our hearts before God” (95).
3. The Self: I have read criticism about the ‘self’ before, and this book helped me to finally develop a working understanding of it. Essentially, as I understand it, there is the “true self,” the being that is interconnected with all other lives and aware of the inherently shared vulnerabilities of the human condition, and the false “self” that is performed through attachment to thoughts and things and identities. One of the strategies to not judge is to grow awareness of the true self, of oneself as ‘judge’ and the ‘other’ that would be judged, at the moment one is tempted to judge. “…we ask deeply, ‘Who am I? ‘ Who is this I, right now, stirred up, accusatory, outraged? Is this really ‘me?’ What causes the identification of these powerful feelings with me? That we are not our thoughts and that it is not for sinful thoughts that we are condemned, but only for making use them, is a crucial teaching of the fathers. The accused other, the converse of my own livid accuser, is likewise unreal, a drastic simplification, a stereotype and not an accurate intuition of a real human being. Asking the question, ‘who am I?’ is critical to non-judgement because we judge precisely in order to establish a sense of self over and against another. We get a boost, a fleeting sense of empowerment… but it’s based on a mirage” (23). “In every lynch mob, the victim who is punished involves a collective projection. Innocent or guilty, the accused always represents more than an individual like any other who has committed a crime. He bears the weight of the lynch mob’s shadow” (25).
1. “As we judge others so we will expect to be judged; if we’re harsh with others we will live with the expectation of harsh judgement, however deeply suppressed. When we act from a place of genuine empathy, we are safe” (35).
2. ***The Crusader: “When another person really gets under our skin, it’s often because something in their behavior touches something we’ve disowned in ourselves. This is commonplace but no less difficult to see and work with” (31). “…the moral crusader filled with righteous indignation proceeds obsessively, not calmly or with clarity; and his efforts are sterile, ineffective, undermined by his own lack of self-awareness. Only contemplative attention that reflects things just as they are, like a mirror and without judging, can heal the passions. In the clear light of non-judging attention we can begin to own what we have projected onto others. We can take up our own cross, the burden of our wounds and conditioning, instead of tying up heavy burdens for others without lifting a finger to help. With time, we can bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” (31).
4. Not judging ourselves: “Wherever you go, do not judge yourself and you will be at peace” (54). “We own and take responsibility for our conduct but leave aside all comparison and measurement” (55). “When we judge ourselves we pit one part of ourselves against another and succeed only in pushing what we disown (dark or light) further into shadow” (55). “Again, n to judging does not mean permissiveness, which is a lack of care, or even tolerance, but withdrawal from action, not repaying evil for evil, no resisting an evildoer, so as not to become entangled in their contagious rage” (58). “Resentment and the desire for vengeance occlude awareness of God in part because tend to imagine God in the image of our own inner state” (59).
1. "...as long as we are criticizing, diagnosing, passing judgement, we will at some level be bracing for counterattack, where if we lead with empathy we remain secure and grounded. We give and receive mercy through the same opening. It's crated by the free gift of forgiveness from God then widened by passing on that gift, or narrowed by judging" (13) “Judging ourselves in the sense of reducing ourselves to our worst behavior is no more accurate or helpful with ourselves than it is with others… It sometimes happens that we need to accept something within us before we accept it in another… by struggling to get along with another person we come to accept an aspect of ourselves we couldn’t have come to terms with otherwise. That is a key dimension of life in community…” (66).
5. Overacceptance, Recollection, and Openness: Overaccepting is an improvisation that “demands great spontaneity, courage, and freedom of spirit. In the moral sphere, it’s the kind of approach required to deescalate and redirect a group under the sway of the Accuser” (25). “In other words, they make themselves guilty to all for everything and take on their brothers’ sins, in full creative freedom not self-flagellation. Jesus’ embrace of the cross - his orchestration of the trial, his prophetic framing of his death in the eucharist - is the supreme moment of such overacceptance.” (53).
1. “If we lose our composure and clarity in correcting another, even if we are successful in warning him away from his poor conduct, we would ourselves have fallen under its sway, our ‘correction’ no more than a reaction in kind to the offender’s own passionate behavior. Of course there are those entrusted with correcting others, and they may feel heated about the situation in which they need to speak out. This saying [‘if you reprieve someone, you yourself get carried away by anger and you are satisfying your own passion; do not lose yourself, therefore, in order to save another] can serve as a kind of examen to sift what we’re experience ahead of an intervention. Do we need more distance? Are we ‘on the war path,’ however rationalized?” (28). “Our perception at any given moment is subject to correction and refinement and the more open we are to this process, aware that things are not always what they seem, the more easily we grow in truth… the spirit of anger and judgment is tendentious and looks for evidence to confirm its skewed reading of events…”
2. “‘He who dwells with brethren must not be square, but round, so as to turn himself towards all’ (32).
3. “Without exception (‘always’) [those who want to be saved] begin from a frank recognition of their own faults and they do so in such a way that they are empowered to make a change. They eliminate their faults instead of eliminating another person they’ve made to represent them” (68).
4. “For someone to express respect for all and on the basis of their inherent worth rather than any conventional human marker can be deeply subversive, showing up our attachment to the status quo and its injustices” (69).
5. “When we’re speaking with someone who puts us on edge, it’s very tempting to find a common target and forge a superficial peace on the basis of this shared animus” (69). Goes without saying not to do this.
6. Tenderness (70)
7. “Not judging means turning toward and not away from another, suffering with and patiently working to heal them, slackening the line again and again, until the exhausted fish is content to be reeled in> judging pulls too hard and snaps the line, or even deliberately cuts the line in anger. It turns away from and not toward” (71).
8. ***”A humble person wades simply into complex situations” (72). “this humility is fundamentally a willingness to listen, an openness to be ‘struck’ by the word (73). “Humility moves with confidence on the basis of things as they are, working within the limits of life in a body, life in time, finding guidance and possibility in these very limits” (73). “Far from making us a passive doormat, such an attitude springs from a place of great freedom and creativity; a practice that refreshes and energies instead of sapping our strength in competing for trifles” (75).
9. ***”Anger as an instinctive feeling needs to be rocked and cradled, cared for with tenderness, precisely so that it won’t hijack our lives” (75).
10. The humble person “with long practice ]has loosened and perhaps untied] the knot of self. Serene and peaceful, at home in himself, such a one ‘has no cause to grow angry” (76).
11. Mercy: “The way of the Gospel, the way Jesus himself demonstrated, is to lay down one’s life even and especially for those who are undeserving, who have no way to repay the gift” (96).
12. “If we form the habit of responsiveness and not imposing our way in minor matters, it will be easier in weightier ones. Far from paralysis or timidity, such an approach makes way for life. We hold a realistic and balanced, not exaggerated, sense of our own fallibility and blind spots and so sit lightly toward views of which we’re inclined to feel certain, aware that new angles and elements will come to light” (107).
6. Degrees of Judging (Dorotheos): “We run a person down when we report their poor behavior to others, condemn when we say that because they acted poorly they are horrible people [, and] despise another for their sin” (64). “… to identify a person with the conduct that keeps him stuck is an act at once of presumption and despair” (65).
1. “Hypocrite, first take the board from your own eye, then you can see to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5, 64).
2. “Judging others involves a narrowing, a stiffness, a reduction in our sense of possibility, where the way of non-judgement, by contrast, brings a dilatatio cordis, an expansion of the heart, a letting go, a relaxation that includes a willingness to suffer and to suffer with others” (67).
7. Discernment:
1. “Discernment is both/and where judgement is either/or” (112)
2. “The tendency is to reduce opposing views to absolute contraries [polemicize] or to downplay and evade real conflict [avoid]. [the desert tradition] involves remaining in polarized spaces, ‘holding’ disagreements in a way that keeps the tension and stays open to it becoming creative, to ‘new thinking,’ a new direction emerging from apparently intractable positions” (138).
The key actions to grow a practice of not judging anyone, through trying and failing, include:
1. Pay attention - create inner space for silence through contemplative prayer will help you to recognize the passions which can’t be still; make way for the passions, feel them to the full, but without reacting’ (80)
2. Feel gratitude for the awareness of our sins and simultaneous unconditional love we receive from God
3. Ask: Who am I?
4. Overaccept improvise, and recollect - ‘the more we cultivate interior space and care for inflamed passions while they are raw, before they fester, the easier it comes to respond to life in a fresh and creative way’ (76).
5. Practice humility by going against the tendency to defend oneself and taking fault on oneself
6. Have mercy - ‘mercy as a fuller and more satisfying form of justice’ (82).
7. Discern (113)
8. Mend to Make New (140-143)
I must have over 300 tabs in this book, but I will try to parse out the ideas, references, and explanations that resonated the most with me:
1. The Parable of the Prodigal Son: Slater starts by making sense of a quotation by Weil through a powerful reading of the Prodigal Son, wherein the Father "suffers in innocence and so becomes the measure, the non-judgement by which the two sons can judge themselves" (3) and "gives expression to [God's] transcendent good, not by floating above the fray, coldly indifferent, but by his willingness to suffer, to empty and humble himself. His peace is not the absence of conflict by a stable presence within it. His equanimity is not unfeeling but able to bear tension, unwilling to force a premature resolution" (4). Where the sons judge each other and the Father and, through comparison, become parodies, "surly and hedonistic (younger) or stingy and righteous (older)," the Father, guided only by love and humility, represents a perfect balance and becomes "a clearing, a place of not judging where his rival sons can meet, where both sons are honored as sons when they least act like it" (142). On the power and pain of unconditional love: “When exposed to the cold a long time, our extremities grow numb and become frostbitten. If we realize how cold we are and come inside, the warmth that wakes our blood flow into circulation feels excruciatingly painful. But it’s the only way to melt and thaw. We may fear that suffering and prefer to stay number and freeze. The pain of remorse, of seeing clearly the nature and extent of our sin, how petty and selfish we’ve been, how we’ve hurt those we most love, can be excruciating. Only the exquisite warmth after so much cold, the cessation of the frigid wind, the awareness of being loved as we are, allows us to bear it” (99).
2. Attention: "A deepening spiritual practice demands sustained, unjudging attention to experience without evading or glossing over it... we can never underestimate our need to soak in and savor, to marinate in divine mercy" (17). "Sin [as a "festering of the wound" of original sin, which is "innocent suffering” and “arrogant” (22)] can only be known in the moment it's forgiven... it's the awareness of the full extent of our misery in the same moment that we realize we are loved, unconditionally, just as we are. Knowing we are loved, just as we are, while seeing keenly and with fresh eyes the nature of our fault, is what prompts us to want to change, from within and freely... from gratitude. Gratuity in response to gratuity" (14). With true repentance, we have "a sense of hope, even excitement, and feel empowered to change... it's the false judge, the Accuser within, who breeds despair and self-hatred" through "our attachment to a view of ourselves as hateful" (16, 18).
1. ***Contemplative Prayer: “A space of nondiscrimination… incompatible with ‘a polemical intention’… ross simply with things as they are, with our experience, just as it is, without judging or changing anything… not pursuing discursive reflection undergrads the practice of ‘not judging’ in the moral sphere… We cultivate distance or space in which our rage and punitive fantasies can come to light, and the needs below the anger be addressed. Remaining in stillness, what is not still, our restless mind and anxious passions, become visible”(32). “Because prayer allows room for anger to arise, before God, in quiet, it becomes a ‘seed of gentleness,’ the beginning, the first hint of a response to real or imagined injustice that is not reactive and obsessive but balanced and self-aware. Prayer involves an inner state of trust and surrender in which we allow all the sides of ourselves to come to light in the presence of an unconditional love, of a Father who ‘knows what we need before we ask’ and numbers every hair on our head” (33).
2. “In the early church, monks were seen as mourners, those who lament for and grieve over the terrible injustice and suffering in human life” (43). “We are invited to grieve over those who are ‘wicked,’ to grieve for the harm they cause others certainly, and also for the harm they do to themselves” (85).
3. “Clear awareness of how constantly the passions leak into our thoughts and key our actions would keep us from fixating on the faults of others. Even if we have not actively fallen into actual sin, we know and see clearly how the seeds of every sin lie buried within us; we are humbled, and refrain from judging… constantly holding in mind that we’re never seeing the whole story and always inclined to mask and minimize our own faults engenders a disposition of humble mercy to all” (52).
4. “attention is the rarest and the purest form of generosity” (83)
5. ***“Keeping watch over the heart, renouncing judgement in small ways throughout the day, prepares us to freely show mercy in more challenging ways when the occasion arrives” (89-90).
6. “in the prayer of stillness we develop the habit of not judging as we allow thought after thought to arise and dissolve without reaction, opening the book of our hearts before God” (95).
3. The Self: I have read criticism about the ‘self’ before, and this book helped me to finally develop a working understanding of it. Essentially, as I understand it, there is the “true self,” the being that is interconnected with all other lives and aware of the inherently shared vulnerabilities of the human condition, and the false “self” that is performed through attachment to thoughts and things and identities. One of the strategies to not judge is to grow awareness of the true self, of oneself as ‘judge’ and the ‘other’ that would be judged, at the moment one is tempted to judge. “…we ask deeply, ‘Who am I? ‘ Who is this I, right now, stirred up, accusatory, outraged? Is this really ‘me?’ What causes the identification of these powerful feelings with me? That we are not our thoughts and that it is not for sinful thoughts that we are condemned, but only for making use them, is a crucial teaching of the fathers. The accused other, the converse of my own livid accuser, is likewise unreal, a drastic simplification, a stereotype and not an accurate intuition of a real human being. Asking the question, ‘who am I?’ is critical to non-judgement because we judge precisely in order to establish a sense of self over and against another. We get a boost, a fleeting sense of empowerment… but it’s based on a mirage” (23). “In every lynch mob, the victim who is punished involves a collective projection. Innocent or guilty, the accused always represents more than an individual like any other who has committed a crime. He bears the weight of the lynch mob’s shadow” (25).
1. “As we judge others so we will expect to be judged; if we’re harsh with others we will live with the expectation of harsh judgement, however deeply suppressed. When we act from a place of genuine empathy, we are safe” (35).
2. ***The Crusader: “When another person really gets under our skin, it’s often because something in their behavior touches something we’ve disowned in ourselves. This is commonplace but no less difficult to see and work with” (31). “…the moral crusader filled with righteous indignation proceeds obsessively, not calmly or with clarity; and his efforts are sterile, ineffective, undermined by his own lack of self-awareness. Only contemplative attention that reflects things just as they are, like a mirror and without judging, can heal the passions. In the clear light of non-judging attention we can begin to own what we have projected onto others. We can take up our own cross, the burden of our wounds and conditioning, instead of tying up heavy burdens for others without lifting a finger to help. With time, we can bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” (31).
4. Not judging ourselves: “Wherever you go, do not judge yourself and you will be at peace” (54). “We own and take responsibility for our conduct but leave aside all comparison and measurement” (55). “When we judge ourselves we pit one part of ourselves against another and succeed only in pushing what we disown (dark or light) further into shadow” (55). “Again, n to judging does not mean permissiveness, which is a lack of care, or even tolerance, but withdrawal from action, not repaying evil for evil, no resisting an evildoer, so as not to become entangled in their contagious rage” (58). “Resentment and the desire for vengeance occlude awareness of God in part because tend to imagine God in the image of our own inner state” (59).
1. "...as long as we are criticizing, diagnosing, passing judgement, we will at some level be bracing for counterattack, where if we lead with empathy we remain secure and grounded. We give and receive mercy through the same opening. It's crated by the free gift of forgiveness from God then widened by passing on that gift, or narrowed by judging" (13) “Judging ourselves in the sense of reducing ourselves to our worst behavior is no more accurate or helpful with ourselves than it is with others… It sometimes happens that we need to accept something within us before we accept it in another… by struggling to get along with another person we come to accept an aspect of ourselves we couldn’t have come to terms with otherwise. That is a key dimension of life in community…” (66).
5. Overacceptance, Recollection, and Openness: Overaccepting is an improvisation that “demands great spontaneity, courage, and freedom of spirit. In the moral sphere, it’s the kind of approach required to deescalate and redirect a group under the sway of the Accuser” (25). “In other words, they make themselves guilty to all for everything and take on their brothers’ sins, in full creative freedom not self-flagellation. Jesus’ embrace of the cross - his orchestration of the trial, his prophetic framing of his death in the eucharist - is the supreme moment of such overacceptance.” (53).
1. “If we lose our composure and clarity in correcting another, even if we are successful in warning him away from his poor conduct, we would ourselves have fallen under its sway, our ‘correction’ no more than a reaction in kind to the offender’s own passionate behavior. Of course there are those entrusted with correcting others, and they may feel heated about the situation in which they need to speak out. This saying [‘if you reprieve someone, you yourself get carried away by anger and you are satisfying your own passion; do not lose yourself, therefore, in order to save another] can serve as a kind of examen to sift what we’re experience ahead of an intervention. Do we need more distance? Are we ‘on the war path,’ however rationalized?” (28). “Our perception at any given moment is subject to correction and refinement and the more open we are to this process, aware that things are not always what they seem, the more easily we grow in truth… the spirit of anger and judgment is tendentious and looks for evidence to confirm its skewed reading of events…”
2. “‘He who dwells with brethren must not be square, but round, so as to turn himself towards all’ (32).
3. “Without exception (‘always’) [those who want to be saved] begin from a frank recognition of their own faults and they do so in such a way that they are empowered to make a change. They eliminate their faults instead of eliminating another person they’ve made to represent them” (68).
4. “For someone to express respect for all and on the basis of their inherent worth rather than any conventional human marker can be deeply subversive, showing up our attachment to the status quo and its injustices” (69).
5. “When we’re speaking with someone who puts us on edge, it’s very tempting to find a common target and forge a superficial peace on the basis of this shared animus” (69). Goes without saying not to do this.
6. Tenderness (70)
7. “Not judging means turning toward and not away from another, suffering with and patiently working to heal them, slackening the line again and again, until the exhausted fish is content to be reeled in> judging pulls too hard and snaps the line, or even deliberately cuts the line in anger. It turns away from and not toward” (71).
8. ***”A humble person wades simply into complex situations” (72). “this humility is fundamentally a willingness to listen, an openness to be ‘struck’ by the word (73). “Humility moves with confidence on the basis of things as they are, working within the limits of life in a body, life in time, finding guidance and possibility in these very limits” (73). “Far from making us a passive doormat, such an attitude springs from a place of great freedom and creativity; a practice that refreshes and energies instead of sapping our strength in competing for trifles” (75).
9. ***”Anger as an instinctive feeling needs to be rocked and cradled, cared for with tenderness, precisely so that it won’t hijack our lives” (75).
10. The humble person “with long practice ]has loosened and perhaps untied] the knot of self. Serene and peaceful, at home in himself, such a one ‘has no cause to grow angry” (76).
11. Mercy: “The way of the Gospel, the way Jesus himself demonstrated, is to lay down one’s life even and especially for those who are undeserving, who have no way to repay the gift” (96).
12. “If we form the habit of responsiveness and not imposing our way in minor matters, it will be easier in weightier ones. Far from paralysis or timidity, such an approach makes way for life. We hold a realistic and balanced, not exaggerated, sense of our own fallibility and blind spots and so sit lightly toward views of which we’re inclined to feel certain, aware that new angles and elements will come to light” (107).
6. Degrees of Judging (Dorotheos): “We run a person down when we report their poor behavior to others, condemn when we say that because they acted poorly they are horrible people [, and] despise another for their sin” (64). “… to identify a person with the conduct that keeps him stuck is an act at once of presumption and despair” (65).
1. “Hypocrite, first take the board from your own eye, then you can see to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5, 64).
2. “Judging others involves a narrowing, a stiffness, a reduction in our sense of possibility, where the way of non-judgement, by contrast, brings a dilatatio cordis, an expansion of the heart, a letting go, a relaxation that includes a willingness to suffer and to suffer with others” (67).
7. Discernment:
1. “Discernment is both/and where judgement is either/or” (112)
2. “The tendency is to reduce opposing views to absolute contraries [polemicize] or to downplay and evade real conflict [avoid]. [the desert tradition] involves remaining in polarized spaces, ‘holding’ disagreements in a way that keeps the tension and stays open to it becoming creative, to ‘new thinking,’ a new direction emerging from apparently intractable positions” (138).
December 30, 2025
I'm going to provide a summary of the book here, as what I took away as the key messages of this text. The ideas and practices presented are challenging; however, very beneficial if attained.
1. It is not our job to judge. It is God's job. When we judge, we are entering into God's territory, basically making ourselves gods. This is a sin and displeases God.
2. Another great point is that polarity, in the sense of divisiveness, is the work of the work, aim, and goal of the devil. We should not walk into his trap. He enlightened the parable of the prodigal son for me. The model of behavior that calls out for following is that of the father of the story. He forgives his son and demonstrates mercy and unconditional love. He also shows the same love to his older son and showers him with generosity.
3. We must examine our own behavior and in doing so, we recognize the so called sins of others. We often despise in others what we ourselves are guilty of. "Anyone who is on good terms with his poverty is rich." Seneca. With work, we can overcome the "tyranny of our own false self."
4. Contemplation can help us see the bigger picture. To accept things as they are.
5. If you can attain the ability to not judge, it will bring you great peace.
6. You are not your thoughts. We will always struggle with emotions. Anger, etc. But we can interrupt, meditate on it and identify its source. "Anger as an instinctive feeling needs to be rocked and cradled."
7. Who am I to judge? A saying of the desert fathers.
8. We all see things from different perspectives. We must always keep this in mind.
9. "Prayer is the seed of gentleness and the absences of anger", Sayings. My own thought is that the examen prayer can help greatly here.
10. Do not judge yourself. When we judge ourselves we are in the state of internal conflict and that spills over into the community. Again, my own thinking is that perhaps shadow work can help here.
11. How can we possibly know the whole story of this person that we casually judge?
12. The importance of compassion. "We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love." Charles De Foucauld.
13. Judging others involves a narrowing, a reduction of our sense of possibility. Instead, adopt an expansion of heart. Dilatatio cordis.
14. We are all one body. When one suffers, we all suffer.
15. The book references the Brothers Karamazov. The willingness to be responsible to all for everything.
16. Humility.
17. Sin is suffering.
18. Adopt the attitude of not being able to not help those who are suffering. The book quotes the work of Simone Weil here.
19. "The best way to purge our hearts of less worthy, distracting desires is to live fully from the deepest desires of our hearts." Unwanted thoughts and movements arise but while there is a powerful impulse to identify with what we are thinking and feeling, we are not our thoughts.
20. "If we keep in remembrance the bad things said to us by people, we are supressing the power of the remembrance of God; but if we keep the bad things in remembrance as though said to us by demons, we will be unharmed." Abba Macarius, the Book of Elders.
Much of what is covered in this book requires a great deal of reflection and internalization. I believe it is a good source for lectio divina, the examen, shadow work, etc. With time and continued dedication, I think the teachings in this book can make a very positive impact on individuals and communities.
1. It is not our job to judge. It is God's job. When we judge, we are entering into God's territory, basically making ourselves gods. This is a sin and displeases God.
2. Another great point is that polarity, in the sense of divisiveness, is the work of the work, aim, and goal of the devil. We should not walk into his trap. He enlightened the parable of the prodigal son for me. The model of behavior that calls out for following is that of the father of the story. He forgives his son and demonstrates mercy and unconditional love. He also shows the same love to his older son and showers him with generosity.
3. We must examine our own behavior and in doing so, we recognize the so called sins of others. We often despise in others what we ourselves are guilty of. "Anyone who is on good terms with his poverty is rich." Seneca. With work, we can overcome the "tyranny of our own false self."
4. Contemplation can help us see the bigger picture. To accept things as they are.
5. If you can attain the ability to not judge, it will bring you great peace.
6. You are not your thoughts. We will always struggle with emotions. Anger, etc. But we can interrupt, meditate on it and identify its source. "Anger as an instinctive feeling needs to be rocked and cradled."
7. Who am I to judge? A saying of the desert fathers.
8. We all see things from different perspectives. We must always keep this in mind.
9. "Prayer is the seed of gentleness and the absences of anger", Sayings. My own thought is that the examen prayer can help greatly here.
10. Do not judge yourself. When we judge ourselves we are in the state of internal conflict and that spills over into the community. Again, my own thinking is that perhaps shadow work can help here.
11. How can we possibly know the whole story of this person that we casually judge?
12. The importance of compassion. "We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love." Charles De Foucauld.
13. Judging others involves a narrowing, a reduction of our sense of possibility. Instead, adopt an expansion of heart. Dilatatio cordis.
14. We are all one body. When one suffers, we all suffer.
15. The book references the Brothers Karamazov. The willingness to be responsible to all for everything.
16. Humility.
17. Sin is suffering.
18. Adopt the attitude of not being able to not help those who are suffering. The book quotes the work of Simone Weil here.
19. "The best way to purge our hearts of less worthy, distracting desires is to live fully from the deepest desires of our hearts." Unwanted thoughts and movements arise but while there is a powerful impulse to identify with what we are thinking and feeling, we are not our thoughts.
20. "If we keep in remembrance the bad things said to us by people, we are supressing the power of the remembrance of God; but if we keep the bad things in remembrance as though said to us by demons, we will be unharmed." Abba Macarius, the Book of Elders.
Much of what is covered in this book requires a great deal of reflection and internalization. I believe it is a good source for lectio divina, the examen, shadow work, etc. With time and continued dedication, I think the teachings in this book can make a very positive impact on individuals and communities.
August 12, 2025
3.5⭐️
May 2, 2026
Brother Isaac provides a clear reminder of Christ and his team through rrklibeo.
Rob
Rob
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