Are you really compassionate?

Chapter 4 of Henri Nouwen’s ‘Turn My Mourning Into Dancing’ has the title: “From Manipulation to Love.” And it is outstanding! It really opened my eyes to assumptions I’ve had that were off base.

He starts out…

“If someone asked you if you were compassionate, you might readily say yes. Or at least, ‘I believe so.’ But pause to examine the word compassion and answering gets more complicated. For the word comes from roots that mean literally to ‘suffer with’; to show compassion means sharing in the suffering ‘passion’ of another. Compassion understood in this way asks more from us than a mere stirring of pity or a sympathetic word.”

[So, perhaps you could say, compassion is more something that one does, than something one feels?]

Also...

“Compassion holds us back from quick, eager explanations when tragedy meets someone we know or love.”

He points to psychoanalyst Arno Gruen's study, The Betrayal of the Self, which shows ‘the actual source of our cruelty and callousness lies in the rejection of our suffering.’

"For we may fall into the illusion that we own people, that we can use them, that we have a right to manage their feelings. By offering premature advice on how to cope, by rushing to reassure, by prodding with advice, we say much about our own need for easy closure. When we barge in with such consolation, we make hurting souls into objects or projects.”

Henri says...

“Many things we think we do for others are in fact the expressions of our drive to discover our identity in the praise of others.”

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“We discover, then, that for all the good intentions, compassion does not form the true basis of our lives. Compassion does not come as our spontaneous response but goes against the grain. We might wonder if it is humanly possible!

Such a view has a healthy consequence. Compassion in its fullest sense can be attributed only to God. It is the central message of the gospel that God, who in no way is in competition with us, is the One who can be truly compassionate. It is because Jesus was not dependent on people, but only on God, that he could be so close to people, so concerned, so confronting, so healing, so caring. He related to people for their own sake, not his own. To say it in more psychological terms, he paid attention without intention. His question was not ‘How can I receive satisfaction?’ but ‘How can I respond to your real need?’ This is possible only when there is a deeper satisfaction, a deeper intimacy from whence attention can be paid. Your love for others can be unconditional, without a condition that your needs are gratified, when you have the experience of being loved.”

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“This approach can take root in us with two disciplines. Solitude, to begin, does not mean so much withdrawing in silence out of antisocial sentiments. Solitude means that our aloneness sometimes does not come as a sad fact needing healing but rather offers a place where God comes to bring communion. In fact, solitude has rich roots and connotations significantly different from two other words often associated with it: Aloneness generally means being by oneself in an neutral way. Loneliness more suggests the  pain of desolation or another’s absence. But solitude carries notes of joy and possibility. For solitude, for the Christian, means not just to wander off to woods or desert or mountaintop for private withdrawal. It means daring to stand in God’s presence. Not to guard time simply to be alone, but alone in God’s company…

Solitude is the place where you can hear the voice that calls you the beloved, that leads you onto the next page of the adventure, that says, as God said to Jesus early in the Gospels, ‘This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”

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“I do not suggest by this that you or I should not see fruit from our ministries, not own property, or not enjoy any possessions. I am not saying we should not want to find affection and love from others. I am saying, however, that our identity can find its basis only in God’s word to us that we are beloved, not on the world’s fickle promises. In Christ we live as God’s beloved before we were born and after we have died; all the circumstances in between will not negate that.”

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“Jesus reveals to us through his words and actions, but most of all through his life and death, that God is love, even toward the unlovely and unlovable.”

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“To love as Christ loved means a participation in the divine love that does not know a distinction between friend and enemy.”

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“In our poverty hides great blessing, for God decided to reveal God’s glory in vulnerability and brokenness, not in commanding presence or manipulative authority. That is what the Cross teaches us anew.”

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I really wish I could have done more with this. As I was reading I intended to break this into two separate sections, one on compassion and one on solitude. However, I've lost interest now that I'm so far into another book. At any rate, these are some great words and ideas.

One thing that strikes me in these thoughts on compassion and solitude is... how often we think "we" need to do something in order for anything to be done. I mean, if compassion is sharing in the suffering of another... and a way to do that is in solitude - where we open ourselves to God... it seems to me all we are really doing in these "acts" is opening ourselves for God to flow through us. In that sense, are we really the ones doing anything?!

I mean, sort of like the idea of prayer. If prayer is 'listening to God'... then the action of praying is - really nothing more than relying on God's action at work in us. So are we taking action in prayer, or is God taking action? And is that the whole point?! That when we are really really praying (or showing compassion) you cannot tell if it's God or us! Is that what being "Christ-like" means?

Anyway, I find this stuff fascinating. I can't say I understand it, and I am not overly sure I really want to. It's like 'losing myself in God' is the way to find myself.

Or something. I dunno.

Peace out; and in.