Compassion

Now here’s something I find hard to figure out. How does love actually work, in the ordinary course of life? Is it something that operates regardless of how you feel, or even act? Or does it require maintenance?

Take, for example, a very mundane situation. You have a friend who’s not really a friend but just someone who is in some way enmeshed in your life. The relationship, if you can call it that, seems to come from nowhere. You have no genuine ties to this person, no common story, or only a very thin one, no shared roots. There may or may not be familial ties but these do not bind you to the person, neither do they sustain you, or the person, in your efforts to be good to one another. You could give up on it, but you don’t. Neither of you does.

You think about duty, the demands of your religion. The terrible word ‘ought’ creeps in and starts to dominate the situation. Perhaps this is what keeps you going, but duty or some kind of filial obligation, perhaps, is not going to carry you through to the next moment of having to do something, or be someone, for this person. At the same time, you don’t want to give up on them. Something compels you to keep going with this act of kindness, whatever it consists of, to go on with the acceptance of this responsibility.

To be responsible for someone is to be answerable for them, rather than to them. This being the case, it helps to know to whom you are answerable and why. I think this is where your religion can be helpful. Most religions do not depend on what a person feels in regard to someone they are responsible for. What is required is the action and occasionally, when it is given, the ability to be open to the possibility of compassion for the one you are helping or serving in some way. Most religions insist that we never block compassion, especially when that compassion impacts how we end up feeling about the person in question. But feelings in themselves are pretty much irrelevant.

Compassion is not to be had on tap. It does not respond to the pressing of a button, as if it was the cappuccino option on a coffee machine. It is more like a hidden spring of water that surfaces when we’re not expecting it. So the feelings that accompany compassion have to do with seeing the person as they truly are, in all the vulnerability of their humanity, regardless of whether or not they want you to see them in this way, which they probably don’t.

Knowing this, means that the subject must be handled with great gentleness, even if they themselves are anything but gentle towards us. It means being gracious to the ungracious and the ungrateful (or seemingly ungrateful), to the irritable of temper, to the sullen and taciturn. It means passing over the snide or cynical remark made in passing (a way of covering emotions they are unaccustomed to and don’t know how to deal with) but hearing them enough for them to register as having been heard. In short, it means drawing on the reserves of grace at our disposal.

For Christians, grace is something we return to continually, in the way a young animal returns to its mother for nourishment. Where I live, we are surrounded by Spring lambs who are doing this all day, in the face of unseasonal rain and wind. They are exposed to these elements despite the closeness of their mothers and the nourishment they receive from her. I think the same is true for all of us when we are faced with emotional demands and commitments that can be just too much at any given moment. We draw sustenance from that hidden inner spring which somehow or other gets replenished as and when needed.

None of this has any bearing on what we feel, objectively speaking, and this is a relief. As long as negative feelings are left alone, they will ultimately wither, or at least diminish to manageable proportions for as long as the compassion is needed. They will no doubt surface later, but this is OK. The main thing is not to dig them over like well-rotted manure so that they start to feed our actions and attitudes in regard to the person in need of our compassion, and of our practical help.

The surprising thing about all this is that treated in the right way, the stuff that we would normally turn over and over, if left alone, starts to reveal itself in a quite different light. The grace factor merges into it, so that the one eventually becomes indistinguishable from the other. The rotten stuff becomes the stuff of grace, strengthening the bonds of affection that we perhaps never knew we had for the person we are trying so hard to love.

Grace Upon Grace

It is better to give than to receive, or so the saying goes. But it is often harder to receive than to give. It would be easy, at a time like this, to dwell on the stresses and difficulties involved in giving at Christmas time; the unaffordable present bought and possibly not entirely appreciated, the present given for all the wrong reasons and the consequences thereof, the present that turns out to be surprisingly right for the receiver, even though you had no idea what they really wanted and the delight it brings to both parties involved.

But what about receiving? Perhaps we are still children at heart. The present under the tree still elicits a frisson of delight, especially if it comes as a surprise, its contents still unknown. The frisson will pass fairly quickly once the parcel has been opened, the enjoyment of the gift may also be short-lived. One can get used to the nicest things, especially when we already have so many of them. In time, after eating too much food, playing too many games (some of them quite subtle and having to do with the manipulation of situations, relationships and people from whom we need or want something) and generally making a lot of noise, internally as well as externally, we wonder if we have received anything at all, or at least anything that is significant other than because of its usefulness or material value. What has it all been about?

I think Christmas is about insignificance. You can read that in a number of ways; as a marking of the illegitimate birth of an insignificant baby into an insignificant part of a vast empire (as it then was) to seemingly insignificant parents; as triviality, a festival that has lost any kind of religious significance for most people, apart from possibly turning out for church at midnight for the candles and carols and the vague sense of bonhomie elicited by the latter.

The sense of bonhomie may well pass by the end of the main meal on the following day. Or it may not. It may not quite pass, because in the barely heated church, in the subdued light and the familiar tunes, something stirred in the hearts of those present, something once known (perhaps in early childhood), something longed for that they need to return to, a longing for goodness and truth that has been stifled and denied for the whole year, or even for a whole lifetime; something that speaks of the givenness of grace; something they suddenly know they need to receive but cannot really name.

We go to church at Christmas to give grace a name. We are there, waiting to be told what name to give this longing in order that we may receive a much needed gift. The gift that we will take away with us is inextricably bound up in the realities of history and focused in the presence of this insignificant baby whose birth we are celebrating.

Most of us, who rarely go to church, don’t have a name that we can call this baby, a name that we can say easily and allow it to repeat itself in the depths of our subconscious. We are waiting to be told what we are to call him, following the example of his mother who waited on the word of an angel, who in turn waited on her ‘yes’ to God’s invitation. We are to call him Emanuel which means God with us.

This is all very well, you may think, until the first argument breaks out the following day, or the overtired and overfed children (or adults) cross lines when it comes to conversation and behaviour, when the magic has evaporated. True. But only true for as long as we fail to remember what such a gift is for. It is for receiving and holding on to, as it retains its hold on us for better or for worse. Time and again, throughout the coming year, we will receive and lay hold of grace upon grace, of Emanuel, God with us.