10 I Out in the Mountains [June 2000
= opinion:

VOICES FROM THE MOUNTAINS

Judge Not

The Rutland Herald, on
May 6, 2000, printed a

_ remarkable letter to the editor

from Elisa Winter with the
title “Better to refrain from
judgment.” Although I’m an
agnostic and Mrs. Winter a
Christian, her last two para-
graphs are so remarkable that
I dialed for her phone number
in Vergennes and left on her
answering machine my grate-
ful congratulations. Here are
her paragraphs:

“If you think that gay folks
are evil or sick or unnatural, I
think you’re wrong, but you
can believe whatever you
want. But while you’re busy
judging and despising and
condemning, please try to
remember once in a while that
judging and despising and
condemning are exactly the
things the stone-throwers
were doing. And Jesus asked
the stone-throwers simply to
look into their own hearts and
see which one of them was

by Lyle Glazier

completely without sin. Then
and only then could a stone be
thrown.

“Are you all so sure that

 

was a child and was especial-
ly moved to discover in her
letter not only the profound
love and forgiveness that is

I am disturbed by what could be
false piety now that gays and
lesbians have been granted rights

of civil union.

you are so perfectly spiritual-
ly evolved that you should be
usurping God’s judgment and
throwing stones at
humans he loves and forgives
just as much as he loves and

-forgives you?”

When I got her answering
service and realized I could
not talk in person to her, I left
a message thanking her. I told
her that I had a remarkable
Sunday school teacher when I

the '

the heart of the New
Testament, but that even in
the Old Testament, her point
is made. (The story of Job, for
example, is the story of a man
who became tested by God to
find out if he was truly with-
out pride and never rebelled
against the will of his Maker.)

As I hung up the phone
feeling clean and refreshed by
even this indirect communi-
cation with Mrs. Winter, I had

in front of me my clipped
copy of her letter. Without
thinking I printed across the
top of it “Judge not that ye be
not judged.”

Where had the words come
from? I was repeating them
from somewhere deep in my
past. I came down stairs and
took from a shelf three
sourcebooks: Roget s
Thesaurus, a two-volume
Everymanis Library Dic-
tionary of Quotations and the
Crown Thesaurus of Quo-
tations. No help there.
Without hope, I turned to the
1941 Merriam Webster
Unabridged Dictionary, and
there, under the word judge,
was what I was looking for in
exactly the words I had writ-
ten across the top of Mrs.
Winter’s letter: “Judge not
that ye be not judged.
Matthew 7.1”

I went to the shelves and
found my well-thumbed Holy
Bible. Written on a blank

page before the title page was
this dedication: “From Mrs.
C. K. Gilbert and the Sunday
School.” There was no date,
but I had been no more than
nine years old — 80 years ago.
What a remarkable pair of
books — the King James Bible
and Noah Webster’s dictio-
nary. And what a remarkable
thing the computer stored in
our brain! Years ago, I learned
from an article in the Brown
University Alumnus how a
pathologist and a psycholo-
gist working together discov-
ered the secret of memory —
that in the brain are tiny wires
or filaments and on those
wires are bumps or follicles,
infinitesimally small, record-
ing experiences. I wrote to the
scientists suggesting that they
get in touch with a poet who
benefits from Wordsworth’s
definition of poetry as “the
spontaneous ‘overflow of

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Do you know

your rights?

We Do.

 

V

       

Gay 86 Lesbian Advocates «Sc Defenders (GLAD) has worked for
over 21 years on behalf of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgen-
dered individuals and people with HIV in the six states of New
England. Whether the issue is employment discrimination, denial
of health care, the rightof glbt students to get an education in
safety, fair treatment for glbt parents, the recognition of families
of same—sex couples or housing discrimination, GLAD is your

equal justice under law