compassion.

The Catholic priest Henri Nouwen wrote,

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all of us love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour- unceasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.

Compassion is no easy act. When someone "does us wrong, " it is so much easier to put them out of our hearts because of how they made us feel- unloved. However, in order to embrace the true essence of unity, we are to get to the point where we no longer need to seperate ourselves fromthem. When we can see in us the same struggle we see in them; it just may come in a different form. True compassion does not mean accepting others' actions regardless of the consequences to us or the world, but about being able to say no where we need to without making the other less of a human being. For a man's problem is not just his problem, but it is really our human problem; he may just be the one acting it out at that moment. And by realizing this, we can see the expansiveness of who we are as a person and as a whole, and this expansiveness makes us capable of comapssion where we thought it was impossible. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, after suffering the horrors of a Siberian prison camp:

It it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to seperate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Next time you get the oppurtunity to show forgiveness and compassion to someone TAKE IT! And remember, they are just a human being doing the best that they can, searching for the home for which all our hearts long.

Let us help one another get there.

whispering assurances

you are exactly where you are supposed to be

in life

this very moment

take a breath

breathe it in

in every situation, a blessing can be found

it is well