Compassion to Heal the World
In the Gospels, the Greek word for compassion is often splagchnizomai, which literally means entrails, internal organs, or bowels; when it refers to Jesus it means he was moved at the core of his emotional life. In Hebrew the word for compassion is rachamim, coming from the root word for womb, but in the Christian tradition compassion is not just a feeling, it is not an individual action―it is action with God. Thirteenth Century mystic, Meister Eckhart, said, “Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.”
Compassion is that feeling of our heart going out, of understanding—or at least trying to comprehend—what another might be experiencing, and acting upon that, reaching out, creating space, offering a hand, and giving justice. One definition is a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. (www.Dictionary.Reference.com) Another dictionary defines it as sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it (www.Merriam-Webster.com). There is nothing the world needs today more than compassion, nothing you or I need today more than compassion.
On this, science and religions agree: we are profoundly connected, and born for compassion. Our brains have neurons that “see” the countenance or actions of others and recognize them as our own.1 When we do good for others, there is increased activity in the pleasure centers of our brains. The question is, what happens to us that this natural impulse can become so distorted that we end up doing harm?
There is an incident in the story of King David that might deepen our understanding of compassion. In 2 Samuel 7, David brought the Ark to Jerusalem because he wanted Jerusalem to be a religious, political, and military stronghold. Since his first victory against the giant Philistine Goliath, he had been at war; settling in Jerusalem was the beginning of a quieter life; in short, he had (with God’s help) overcome his enemies. Perhaps this more settled life was a bit unsettling for a man used to being a warrior king. David did well following God’s instructions in wartime, but when David started building his own power base, his relationship with God may have suffered. In 2 Samuel 6:6-7 there is an accident: the cart carrying the Ark was jostled and one of David’s soldiers, Uzzah, reached out to steady it; he touched the Ark, and God struck him dead. David became afraid of God. This is different from “fear of the Lord” meaning awe and respect for divine power, this is fear of anger―both God’s anger and his own. David was afraid and angry; though we hear no more about it in the text, I wonder if this fear and anger and unspoken grief led him down a dangerous road.
David was thinking a lot about himself: “I live in a palace of cedar, but God (in the Ark) stays in a tent; how does that look, the God of the warrior king is in a tent?” Not so impressive. And what about appeasing this angry God? It might have been out of fear rather than worship that David suggested building a permanent temple. Fear and ego can lead to appalling violence; think about Saul’s relationship with David. And it seems that God would have liked David to understand their relationship differently. God reminds David of the divine presence and protection “from following the sheep.” From the beginning it has been the divine will to make peace for the people, and God declares this relationship not just with David, but with David’s future children. It was not about a house; it was not about impressing people; it was/is about love, like a parent for a child.
What I see in this story is the unspoken grief, fear, and anger twisting David’s soul. What does it do to someone to be at war with your own family, to have responsibility for the death of your best friend and his father, your former mentor? What does it do to the soul to kill so many unknowns? To lose your own people in battle? In our own time how do we attend to our own battles, whether we’ve been to an actual war or not? What do we do with our own fear, grief, and anger at our losses? How do we seek healing?
Like David, I think we seek to protect ourselves, to push away the scary feelings by building our power, fortifying our defenses, and appeasing God by “doing all the right things.” When, inevitably, we face another loss we redouble our efforts; sometimes we can become even frantic, feeling that our whole world is going to fall apart if we can’t keep it together to fortify, to appease, to defend. But none of this leads to healing.
Compassion leads to healing. Jesus often invites his disciples in the midst of overwhelming crowds or circumstances to come away, to rest. The task is not to run away to build power, nor to find ways to appease people, but to quiet themselves. I see it as time to grieve, time to sit with the feelings of anger and fear rather than to push them away. It is time for compassion for themselves first, time to be present and open to God. Perhaps this is why it is so easy for Jesus to turn to the crowds again and again.
When we look at the state of our cities, our country, and our world, we are surrounded by violence and loss. Think about the devastating loss of life in Syria, the Ukraine, racial and domestic violence in our country, and in our own neighborhoods. Whether global or local, the pace of human destruction evokes our collective fear, anger, and grief. Our impulse is often to defend, to escape, or even to become inured to it. What happens if we sit with it quietly? What if we acknowledge and honor our sadness for the loss of life and love, the stories of lives cut short. Maybe we notice that we are angry at the seeming easy availability of guns, or perhaps we are upset on behalf of the many victims of violence who don’t receive any attention. If we continue to sit with these feeling we might notice that we are furious at the unpredictability of violence, and recognize our own vulnerability. We are afraid that we too might be cut down, might lose those whom we love, might be unable to hold onto whatever scraps of security we have put together in this post-modern age.
What if we sit with these feelings, so uncomfortable, even overwhelming for some of us, triggering memories of other events, more discomfort, and we sit and are open to God? If we can stay with it, we might find ourselves understanding what people might be feeling in Kiev, Ukraine, or Aleppo, Syria, the people of Roswell, New Mexico (the site of a recent school shooting), or Jacksonville, Florida (where a gunman fired into a car of young people killing one because of a conflict about music). We might find our empathetic neurons start to connect. We might find God’s own grief, anger, and fear for creation, and God’s acceptance and compassion for our human brokenness. We might even start to feel the breeze of that compassion and open our tightly balled up fists, soften our tensed muscles, and warm our hearts. We might begin to heal.
Compassion is not just a feeling, but an action in which we reach out to make a difference in the life of another. We reach out to offer healing, and we find ourselves receiving healing. When we open ourselves to know someone else’s suffering, when we let that person be a “mentor” for us; we can “tap into something deep inside ourselves and allow a look ‘at [our] own homelessness, [our] own inner prisons, … [our] own battering in new and more compassionate ways.’ Wasn’t that the way Jesus invited? When he reached out to the poor, the sick, the outcast, didn’t he invite us to reach out in that mutual exchange of love and learning?”2 Other times we are so weighted by our own brokenness that we cannot even imagine sitting with feelings, never mind reaching out. We think that it is all we can do just to keep ourselves going in our own crazy lives, our dysfunctional marriages, our needy children or relatives, demanding bosses or depressing un- or under-employment, our disconnected friendships and resulting loneliness. The good news is that God sees us and has splagchnizomai―God sees us coming with all our grief, anger, and fear and God runs toward us with an embrace. Again, it is the same Greek word that describes the father’s feeling at first sight of the prodigal son’s return. We are embraced and loved. Again and again, through every shooting, every battle of every kind, every time we are deluded by our own power and every occasion in which we evade our own responsibility, God calls us to the possibility of healing; God invites us to know love not for our accomplishments or our disasters, but for the very core of our being.
Notes
1. Leah Rampy, “Contemplative Leadership: Compassion, Power, and Hope”, http://www.shalem.org/index.php/resources/publications/contemplative-leadership.
2. Ibid., with quote from Janet Hagberg, Real Power: Stages of Personal Power in Organizations.
