Three Steps to Compassion

I think that compassion is the point of life.

How can we do it better?  

Being better at compassion - building these relationships - is the key to a successful life by any measure. This last week I've been quoting the christian philosopher/priest Henri Nouwen, who, I think, gives clear,  direct, challenging guidance for compassion. How did Nouwen get good at compassion?  

 First, Henri let go of the mistake of isolation:

"If we cling tightly to our own weaknesses, faults, shortcomings, and our twisted past, to all the events, facts, and situations which we would prefer to cut out of our own history, we are only hiding behind a hedge through which everyone else can see. What we have done is to narrow our world to a small hiding place where we try to conceal ourselves, suspecting rather pitifully that everyone has seen us all along."

Second, Henri stopped comparing himself with others:

"Compassion grows with the inner recognition that your neighbor shares your humanity with you. This partnership cuts through all walls which might have kept you separate. Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end."

Third, finally, Henri learned to embrace the faults of others (long, worth reading):

"There is nothing in me that does not belong to them, too. There is nothing in them that does not belong to me, too. In my heart, I know their yearning for love and down to my entrails, I can feel their cruelty. When someone murders, I know that I too could have murdered, and when someone gives birth, I know that I am capable of birth as well. In the depths of my being, I meet my fellow humans with whom I share love and hate, life and death."

Satellites: what miscommunication?

Henri says that everything that happens after - communication, acts of love, breaking organizational barriers of love - comes naturally. Once the spirit of compassion (coughcough Holy Spirit) fills our mind, barriers become challenges that we can feasibly overcome.

With the rise of global communications, we can witness the scope of humanity as a species. Moving forward as our tools and tech continue to improve,  
the challenges to global unity are mindset, not logistics.

We are living in a great time. Take Nouwen's advice and get in the compassion mindset!

How to Act (Be) Compassionate

Do you know the "Loaves and Fishes" story from the Bible? Jesus is a traveling preacher, and a crowd of 5,000 has gathered to hear him. Jesus wants to feed them, but the disciples think that's rather impractical. Then Andrew says...

“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?”  Jesus said, “Have the people recline.” Now there was a great deal of grass in that place. So the men reclined, about five thousand in number. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. John 6:9-11

This was the mass reading a few weeks ago, and the teaching afterward really stuck with me (and not because of my name). Think of all the people who had to contribute something for everyone to be fed. Maybe, like the disciples, our talents involve organizing, finding resources, distributing goods. Maybe, like Jesus, we are good leaders and inspiring orators. Maybe, like the boy, we have some insignificant resource to contribute, and instead of casting it aside as worthless, we volunteer our meager resources and someone else makes them great.

The pastor let us think about the ways our careers and work life contributes to our shared goals.
Then he said something surprisingly direct:

Oh, and of course every Christian must feed the poor, literally. Christ is very clear on this point. We have two homeless shelters nearby that need you today. No one should be hungry in a city with Christians.

http://no-hunger.org/

That simmered in me for a few weeks, then last Thursday we volunteered at Second Harvest. It's a non-religious food bank that serves all south Louisiana. It is the most well-connected, efficient, and effective operation nearby, and I happened to know their head chef. To give you a sense of the scale of the operation, before Isaac he was able to freeze 500 gallons of high-protein chili, made entirely from donated goods and volunteers (by volunteers). He averages about 3,000 meals for kids every week, and the facility distributes about 42,000 pounds of food weekly. These people are serious   rock   stars. 

Thursday was a special post-Isaac sorting day, since a bunch of stores donated their older stuff (food their insurance would replace anyway). We didn't get to teach or cook, but our meager gifts - three hours, a good back and a basic knowledge of food safety - helped the five in our group process about 4,000 pounds of food, which Chef will use all week.

I could be hanging out here instead!

Compassion lowers me down the hierarchy that I have worked to climb. I am not hungry. My fridge is full. Even my cats eat well. I buy some cheese and alcohol sometimes - luxury goods - and I even eat at restaurants. That's because my family has stable income that is generous enough that we can spend surplus on comfort and entertainment.

We have worked hard and risen a (short) ladder of success to have these things.

Why would I hang out with hungry people and the accessories of hunger, like donated food? Why would we remind ourselves of the things we have worked hard to avoid? Why would I voluntarily experience the downward movement towards poverty when I'm achieving that upward movement towards prosperity?

Because compassion is both the central pillar of human progress and   the fundamental teaching of Jesus. Jesus' humanity is an act of divine compassion. And true compassion is not looking down from a safe, privileged point of view, it is (like Jesus) building a home among hunger and want. 
 
I'm not there yet. But if  you've ever stopped yourself from doing something insignificant to help feed the hungry, get a shift from Catie: cquinn@secondharvest.org.

Sunday Prayer

I recently quoted one of our family favorites, Henri Nouwen. His life and work focused on the meaning of compassion in Christianity - removing the pretension and judgment from his organizations to help them make Christ fully present again. Plus, he's an easy read (and inexpensive)! Here is his prayer:

Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.
And what you want to give me is love,
unconditional, everlasting love.
Amen.

ps: Watch Nouwen's homily. If pastors can be this engaging, this positive and supporting, this loving, they will form communities of love and their organizations will thrive, and the participants in these organizations will also thrive.

Disciplines of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen - 2120 INT from Crystal Cathedral Ministries on Vimeo.

Compassion: The Heart of Christianity

Compassion is the cornerstone of everything Christian. 

Too often we don't think of Christianity that way. Christian organizations foster judgment  that separates good, pious, successful people from immoral, godless people. 

That's not in keeping with the most basic goals of humankind, which is to create loving relationships, networks, and communities. So it's no wonder so many of us don't find a home in Churches!

But don't listen to some TV faux-Christian jerks: Jesus Christ was about compassion, not judgment.

Compassion means recognizing in oneself the potential for the same weaknesses we see in the other; to relate the suffering of the other to one's own potential for suffering. Compassion is to forget our proud success and security, and to visit dark places in ourselves. Compassion is to see the hungry, poor, sick, and know, "I, too, can be hungry. I, too, can be poor. I, too, can be sick. I, too, rely on the help of others."

"Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it."
Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

And that is what Jesus taught, and what Jesus was, because:

Christ is Compassion (Christian means Compassionate)

In the most basic, metaphysical way, Christ (and so "Christianity") is compassion. The name "Christ", Greek Khristós, which is a translation of the Hebrew Māšîaḥ, in English is "Annointed". The title refers to the Christian belief that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled the "messianic" prophesies of the Hebrew bible that would connect the physical, geopolitical reality of the tribes of Israel with their Yahweh.

Likewise, the core of modern Christian philosophy is the concept of transcendence. That is, Jesus the Nazarene was both divine and human, simultaneously. Which is to say that Jesus, God eternal, chose to occupy a distinct, limited time and space, to experience human emotions and shortcomings, and to suffer death. Why would God do such a thing? What does this mean for us, today? 

Well, to me it means that Jesus' entire person is was compassion - experiencing parts of life that we would like to avoid. So not only did Jesus teach about compassion, Jesus' entire mission WAS compassion. So we can boldly say that anything that is not compassionate is not Christian. 

Slippery Slope of Religious Logic

marriage equality will lead to bestiality?

Last week I debated the "Slippery Slope" of marriage equality with the Deacon. You're lucky if you're not familiar with this argument. The premise is that any argument about marriage equality that has to do with not legislating morality - free, consenting adults should be able to marry whomever they choose - could also work for polygamy, and maybe even bestiality and pedophilia.

As I type this I can barely stop from punching my own screen.

This sort of thinking has kept religions from social change - and good people from religions - for millennia. This legalist, logical purist righteousness is the shield religious organizations use to prevent change and preserve the structures of injustice from which they benefit.

But the Deacon - who was pushing my buttons for giggles, and isn't actually a homophobe IRL - was persistent. I'm glad he was because it's a common argument in Church groups, and now I have a solid rebuttal that touches some major issues  in modern religious language. In two parts: rebuttal from theology and rebuttal from philosophy


Logic is not a Christian value. Not in the same way that compassion and love are Christian values. But it's the use of Aristotelian logic and reason (via Thomas Aquinas) that keeps Christianity from embracing those Gray Areas. Thomas applied the same type Aristotelian logical thinking that was so helpful in early physics and math (it actually wasn't) to issues of morality, spirituality, and religion.

Thomas is the medieval source of the legalism that plagues Christianity. It is the same legalism that Paul yells at in Galatians, and that Jesus fights in the Gospels (from last Sunday):

And [Jesus] said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.' You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast to the tradition of men." Mark 7:6-8

The "Slippery Slope" fallacy relies on the kind of logical legalism that Jesus and Paul fought against. Christians should be motivated by compassion, not legalism and logic. I think the Gospels make that obvious.

There is another, secular argument against the slippery slope. Context matters, social cues change, and what's right and wrong evolves over time. Hegel might call this the spiral of history. Every year is not like the preceding year: we all change over time, so it is natural that our views evolve. According to this logic, it is perfectly valid to say that a view is "right" this millennium that was "wrong" last millennium. Thus, "right and wrong" are not absolutes built into the machinery of the universe, they are social constructs that evolve with our society.
 
Today we are not called to judge every conceivable issue, today we are only called to judge the issues that arise today.



I think we've evolved to the moment for marriage equality. I do not think that our path through history will lead us to bestiality, but we have to leave that to our descendents.


Activists, keep raising issues whose time has come!

Original Sin, Tiny, and and the New Millennium

Perfect in Every Way

Baptism, in theory, is about Original Sin. That can of worms is the other reason I love the theology of Baptism - we wrap up all our issues and questions about morality, community, and rituals, insert some cute babies and linen suits and BAM: THEOLOGY HAPPENS.

And it happens to be an area in which our project of re-imagining faith with or without church structures can be particularly fertile.


I didn't get around to talking about Original Sin last week because, frankly, the ceremony has moved away from that kind of language. I read through the prayer book for infant baptism over and again, but I really didn't see the strong language of overcoming sin through cleansing waters or anything like that.

Which was appropriate, since Tiny is perfect in every way, and it's ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

But Baptism is still a major part of the traditional Theology of Sin. The traditional concept (as inherited from Paul through Augustine) is that Adam's sin in Eden is inherited by all people. Only through Baptism and the acceptance of Jesus is that sin forgiven. Thus, traditionally, infant Baptism language has been about asking forgiveness for the infant so that the infant does not go to hell for Adam's sin.

contemporary source

That's ridiculous. But don't throw the baby out with the theology of sin bathwater. This is an area where tons of scholars have been trying to modernize medieval notions. More contemporary sources seek to square a conception of sin with existential angst, the Freudian subconscious, and the context of evil in the world.

Evil is not a medieval notion that we can discard. We do experience hatred and violence and evil today. And its existence continues to make us question our world, even in our new millennium. Evil continues to be a profound truth, even if the notion of babies in hell is no longer credible.
Let's strip that legalism from the idea of sin like we were scraping barnacles off of a boat.  

At it's core, the doctrine of sin is about self-empowering pride that forgets humanity's interdependence and finitude, leading to conflict.

Humans are at once free to set infinite goals of power, wealth, and control, and at the same time trapped in limited bodies, in finite time, and reliant on others in context. The result is anxiety, and temptation towards isolation, estrangement, and self-destructive egotism.

That is the opposite of community building through loving relationships and compassion, which is the goal of  Christianity, and the most profoundly human good.

To reinsert Christian language, "Satan's empty promises" are those of power and control through isolation; God's offer of salvation requires us to reject power and isolation in favor of compassion and community. Baptism allows families to show their mutual dependence, and, by welcoming the infant into the  community, promise that the child will be part of the loving network, too.

I think we can all get behind that message of Baptism. Compassion, networks of loving relationships, are central both to the Christian experience and to the human experience. Moving forward I hope we can remember to keep the baby when we throw out the bathwater.

Sunday Prayer

This week's prayer honors Tiny's Baptism last week:

Thanks to Your mercy, O Infinite God, I know something about You not only through concepts and words, but through experience. I have actually known You through living contact; I have met You in joy and suffering. For You are the first and last experience of my life. Yes, really You Yourself, not just a concept of You, not just the name which we ourselves have given to You!

You have descended upon me in water and the Spirit, in my baptism. And then there was no question of my convincing or excogitating anything about You. Then my reason with its extravagant cleverness was still silent. Then, without asking me, You made Yourself my poor heart’s destiny.
Karl Rahner, Encounters with Silence