Wonderings--May 26

As I continue to think and grieve over the shooting Uvalde, I thought about the intersection point between grief and compassion. Both ideas are serious and both can require a lifetime to fully address or practice. We can spend years trying to live compassionately in a world that does not practice compassion themselves. 

Nonetheless, God asks each of us to find space in our lives when these moments of suffering take place, and when our world is rocked to its spiritual foundations, and practice both ideas concurrently. 

To that end, as I wrestled with these ideas, I also remembered something that I read a long time ago which helps me with this practice. I return to these words often when 'presence' of compassion and the 'pain' of grief come together around me. 

Henri Nouwen wrote: 

"It might sound strange to consider grief as a way to compassion. But it is. God asks me to allow the sins of the world--my own included--to pierce my heart and make me shed tears, many tears, for them. There is no compassion without many tears. If they can't be tears that stream from my eyes, they have to be at least tears that well up from my heart. When we consider the immense waywardness of God's children. . . our violence, our anger, our resentment, and when look at them through the eyes of God's heart, I cannot but weep and cry out in grief." 

The act of crying out in pain as Nouwen speaks about, either out loud or silent in my heart, leads us toward a position of compassion. 

But in our compassion we are not resigned or apathetic toward what we witness in our world. We do not state that our world is 'getting what it deserves.' We don't distance ourselves from the pain even though this pain resides at such a physical distance from us in this moment. We further cannot just say, 'well that is their pain what am I to do about it.' 

Instead the pain of the world can enter into our hearts. It can, and it should, touch us and call us into our own grief time. In that time of grief, and in the space that we encounter God in, We receive His compassion. We feel God's love once again holding us closely. 

In our time of grief we can, and we should, turn to the Lord through prayer and presence. In our pain we continue onward because of Lord goes with us everywhere. As we turn to God, I wonder what God might do in our hearts?  

I wonder if you can find that intersection point between grief and compassion? Perhaps God is there and perhaps God is preparing to teach you something? 

Blessings

Rev. Derek