Compassion

There is always an "I" in the "we."  We are comprised of seven billion individual selves. That's why in my previous blog I said that the whole is only as strong as the weakest one.So what is the gel, the glue, the cohesive factor that makes seven billion individual selves one massive body, one whole? 

Oh, sure, I could say, it's "love," whatever that means, really. Love has become an overused, misunderstood and vaguely untranslatable word.  I don't think we know really what love is.  I think we sense its coming, its being near, its sweetness, its tenderness, its sheer vulnerability and power, and yet we reach to hold it, grasp and keep it, and poof, it's gone.  It may linger for a little while, touching down like a hummingbird on your patio flower. But, have you noticed, it doesn't stay around like the squirrels or ducks.  It doesn't stay because we are incompatible with it.  All things in nature are drawn to their own, to that which energetically matches or resonates to themselves, as in, "birds of a feather flock together."  

While love might be the glue, and since there's relatively little love in comparison to the need for love in our heavy, dark, world today, the glue has to be something else.  And, that glue is very real and very much the cure for the whole world. It's compassion, the ability to suffer with another.  

Since we're all prison cell mates on this planet, trapped in a dense atmosphere of pain, control, oppression, greed and absolute competition for the best seat in the house, or for the biggest piece of bread, or the largest crumb on the ground, we all labor and groan together in one sad song to the universe. Yet, even the most hardened cell mates in a prison grow to have some compassion for another prisoner who is unfairly mistreated.  Why is that?  Really, in this competitive race to simply survive, why is there any altruistic compassion out there at all? Why would a beggar share his gleanings from a local dumpster with another, knowing he will have to go and climb through another garbage for something to each later?

I think it's because in our individual projection, we see ourselves in others, we mirror ourselves back to each other, as in "I see me in your eyes." So, we also can feel another's pain because it triggers our own memories of pain or our own current pain.  While this on some level would be diagnosed as a kind of narcissism, it's really not. It is some kind of gift that allows us to grow, to heal, to come together. I think it's a divine gift, imbued in our original creation, a source for spiritual growth and a guarantee that somehow we will heal ourselves.  I think the fact it's there points to the promise that there is hope. 

When I first saw the picture I ran yesterday of the child and the vulture, my heart was torn in pain.  I sobbed and, as you read, the photographer himself was so saddened by what he saw in the Sudan that the pain of it led him to end his own life. (it was also stated that he also suffered intermittenly with a bipolarity.) "What a sensitive soul," is what I thought, "a man so in touch with his own inner suffering that the scene he photographed triggered it."

I thought about the photo until a kind of pervasive cloud came over me, a lingering profound sadness that nothing could uplift. It's not just the child's terrible situation, her pain, her terrible hunger, and the predator waiting for his food also.  It became for me an iconic photo.  Aren't these two images - the vulture and the starving child - symbolic, deep, powerful, evocative images of our own inner human condition?  Aren't we all in the same condition as that poor starving little girl?  Isn't there a hurting, wounded inner child in us, not to use an overused description of the inner "self,"  your own piece of the "we"?

And, the vulture, we could say it's the ego or the multinational corporations, or evil itself, that's out there thieving whole nations and peoples. Or, we could say in more benign language, it also has a role in our spiritual evolution by providing the very suffering we need to become aware of our incomplete inner self that remains broken off from the whole, separate, detached, lingering and laboring in an agonizing, silent lonliness.  It serves to begin the birth pains of our eventual individual and then collective awakening and birth. 

In that photo, it's a symbol of the war, of the genocide that was happening in the Sudan then, and today is in Syria and Somalia.  It is the ultimate evil because it is abused and broken human innocence, steeped in ignorance of its own wounded nature that has become prey and then predator itself. In its blind fury and inner numbness, it becomes controlled by the forces of fear which induce a spiritual coma of need and lack strong enough, spiritually blinding enough to stalk the weakest among us, the spiritually starving soul of an abused and neglected little one. Even if this baby girl lived, (and I pray she did) how good would her self esteem ever be?  Could she, with parents who would most likely have lost her if the photographer hadn't chased off the vulture, ever feel the love she would need to give her the strength and personal power to face down the human vultures in her world? In her world?  In the Sudan?

The point is, this picture stings my heart until tears wash my soul, because something in my own soul resonates and can feel that little baby girl's pain. That child is me and it is that recognition that stirs a sense of familiarity, of knowing this child's pain and of wanting to reach out and scoop her up in my arms and take her home and feed her, bathe her, dress her, hold her, heal her, sing to her, make her safe, feed her soul until she is laughing in the sun, playing on a lush green lawn with other little children. And, on rare moments, she may look up at me from her play with a deep, inexpressible knowingness, of remembering, and then joyfully return to play.  She is me.

She is you, also.  She is in you.  As you see this inner scene, as you watch as the photographer watched, will you also chase off the vulture, your own unhealed part that stalks your own inner child?  Will you chase it off?  

As we wake up to this very real human condition which is in all of us, every single one of us, we become more honest with ourselves and consequently more honest with everyone else.  It is in that honesty that we will find our compassion and when we find our compassion we will begin to heal ourselves and the world.  Because, Christ said, "whatever you do for the least of these, your brothers and sisters, you do for me."  (Matthew 25) And, Christ is one with that inner child, that abused, neglected inner self.  As much as she is me and she is you, Christ is also one with her and you and me.  It is our a priori condition.  It's the way we were made and while it is today not fully realized, the seed hasn't grown into a great acorn tree yet. In that possibility, there is hope.

But, at first we cry. We cry, sobbing rivers of salty tears until we realize we are weeping for our own broken, starving inner child as much as and in symphony with this most precious little human jewel crumpled in the dark Sudanese dirt. And, as we realize and chase off the vulture, something in us changes us forever.  We find our inner hero who will let nothing stop him or her from saving that child and all children, all suffering everywhere.  

In that there is some glimmer of hope because, as we love another, we heal our own brokenness and love ourselves and as we love this way, with honesty and compassion, we meet Christ who is indelibly one with our own authentic self. It is Christ, who is the powerful spirit, the logos, the road less traveled and yet the only way to our fullfillment of beinghood.  We are made in God's image and the Christ spirit is God's very spiritual power to raise us up, grow us up, and teach us and heal us with authentic love.  This is the hope that one day "we" will be a whole, fully healed, one, in which everyone is full and shining in the light of empowerment and enlightenment.  

I realize that is an awesome, gradiose vision for us today.  It is a banquet for a starving child, but in it contains the promise that things are not going to stay the way they are forever, that there really is a new heaven and a new earth because, quite simply, it's written in our very nature. In our tears today are the seeds for our joy some day.