Can We Talk? #CompassionateSunday
A process for developing personal compassion to engage in compassionate community for a more compassionate world
Welcome to Compassionate Sunday. We’re working through Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong, one step per month.
If you’d like to share a post about what you learned about compassion (The First Step), what you’re seeing in your world (The Second Step), self-compassion (The Third Step), empathy (The Fourth Step), mindfulness (The Fifth Step), action (The Sixth Step), how little we know (The Seventh Step), or how to speak to one another (The Eighth Step) use the link list below. Or join the discussion in the comments or on Facebook.
I took on this project to work through Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life in twelve months because I feared a particularly bruising election year. I hoped for balance. Instead, I’m encountering discouragement.
As I reach the end of The Eighth Step, I despair that we have any capability at all to speak to one another with compassion. “All lives matter” shouted in a hate-filled voice. Issues that force people into two opposing camps when compassion might call for sympathy for every one in the whole sorry situation. People in so much pain that asking them to consider compassion would be a cruel act.
My focus is on the wrong place. It is the opposite of compassionate to judge the level of compassion in other people’s words or actions. I’ve been startled several times while pursuing compassion at how often it leads back to me. I control only one person’s words: mine. My quest to speak with compassion begins and ends with me. I’d be happy to have you join me, though!
You must not be discouraged, Joy. I used you as an example yesterday to my daughter-in-law as a voice of conscience that the media has not (sadly) visited. I told her that she mustn’t use the interviews the media grants as examples of the typical voice of people.
Yes, one person at a time.
http://readerbuzz.blogspot.com/2016/09/nothing-but-picture-books.html
Although there’s no point in wallowing in discouragement, it’s a natural progression towards awareness. You need to notice flaws and sometimes things will seem overwhelming on the way to awareness. I say embrace the lows as well as the highs, because they are a sign that you are growing inwardly. 🙂
I think discouragement is part of the process. Ad long as we don’t stay to do long or linger in discouragement. For me to truly be discouraged is to begin to truly feel true authentic empathetic response and motivated me to continue to trudge forward and onward.
You are so right, Joy. We can only control ourselves. I’ve often thought about the compassionate levels of others, but it’s important to turn inward and look at myself instead.