(Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge)
To share His hidden glory you must learn
That others’ errors are not your concern –
When someone else’s failings are defined
What hairs you split – but to your own you’re blind!
Grace comes to those, no matter how they’ve strayed,
Who know their own sin’s strength, and are afraid. . . .
A sot became extremely drunk – his legs
And head sank listless, weighed by wine’s thick dregs.
A sober neighbor put him in a sack
And took him homewards hoisted on his back.
Another drunk went stumbling by the first,
Who woke and stuck his head outside and cursed.
“Hey, you, you lousy dipsomaniac,”
He yelled as he was borne off in the sack,
“If you’d had fewer drinks, just two or three,
You would be walking now as well as me.”
He saw the other’s state but not his own,
And in this blindness he is not alone;
You cannot love, and this is why you seek
To find men vicious, or depraved, or weak –
If you would search for love and persevere
The sins of other men would disappear.
From Farid al-Din ‘Attar’s thirteenth-century Conference of the Birds
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