Why is it so hard?  
It’s as if our minds were constructed to pass judgment on our fellow beings.  
Just like that. Knee-jerk.  
And there is no other area of our personalities  
in which the vast network of defense comes into play.   

Everything that is unhinged and desperate in us, 
everything that has haunted us from the very womb of our  
mothers  
—the inherited fragilities, the learned behaviors and attitudes—  
comes roaring up from those cellars of our psyches  
and latches on to the behavior of our companions in life.  

If we could just step aside and view our reactions from out- 
side ourselves . . .  
If we could get something like an objective view of how we  
leap to view another . . .  

Would we laugh?  
Does God laugh?  
Does God take his head in his hands and groan?  
Or does God simply and plainly understand?  

It’s hard to understand such love.  
We can be so stupid and so objectionable and so mixed up.  
Disbelieving in a love that takes all that nonsense  
into its hands  
and continues to desire us  
is probably the greatest temptation we will ever face.  

When we look on the crucified love that is holding us  
we can get some idea of what human life is all about.  

Human life means that I lay my heart at the feet of the one  
whom I want to judge.  
The whole of what I am here for is to withhold that judgment  
and wrap it in bonds of respect and love.