Day 13

From today's reading on compassion from Nouwen:

Jesus' command, "Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate," (Luke 6:36-37) is a command to participate in the compassion of God himself. He requires us to unmask the illusion of our competitive selfhood, to give up clinging to our imaginary distinctions as sources of identity, and to be taken up into the same intimacy with God which he himself knows.

This is the mystery of the Christian life: to receive a new self, a new identity, which depends not on what we can achieve, but on what we are willing to receive.

This new self is our participation in the divine life in and through Christ.

...

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts,
to enter into places of pain,
to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish.

Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery,
to mourn with those who are lonely,
to weep with those in tears.

Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak,
vulnerable with the vulnerable, and
powerless with the powerless.

Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human...

In other words, compassion means being fully present to others. Compassion means that we walk with people, wherever they are, through whatever they face, seeking God in every step along the way. Sometimes all we need is someone beside us, someone to listen, someone to just be with us. Not to advise, not to correct, not to solve anything. Just...to be.

I think this is what the Old Testament book of Lamentations teaches us. Besides reading the text itself, if you want to read an excellent companion to the poems, I highly recommend this book: Lamentations and the Tears of the World by Kathleen O'Connor. Read it for yourself - read it for those around you. You won't regret it.