When I see someone that is poor, sick, or hurting I like to make things better. I like to comfort, give, help. To be honest I do it because pain, especially the pain of others, is uncomfortable for me. When I see pain, sadness, anguish I just want to make it go away so I help.
In the reading for today Nouwen says, "Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless." (p.56). I don't want to do that. I want to fix it, to make it go away, to make it better.
I think we look at Jesus that way. The most popular understanding of the work of Jesus is that he came to make it all better. For me though the power of the work of Jesus is that he came in flesh, "made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." (Philippians 2:7). Jesus is the incarnation of compassion by Nouwen's definition, "Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human." (p.56).
As I grow toward the cross I hope to let go of my need to make it go away and instead learn to live my life with those that Christ came to live with.
Recently, a couple of girlfriends of mine have been having martial problems. One has gotten divorced, and the other is still sitting in the midst of suffering...not yet able to make a decision in one direction or another for fear of doing something wrong. Even though I've been through a divorce, I don't have the 'right words' to ease their suffering. So I sit, to be present with them.
ReplyDeleteAs I watch them struggle with the same issues I faced over three years ago, I find myself crying over feelings that I thought I had worked through and resolved. I find that my emotions are still raw. Still right there, waiting to be awakened...I am crying about pain that I thought couldn't hurt anymore. I was wrong.
We have had our "Girls Nights" where we sit in each other's houses and just cry. For joy of self-discovery (and how guilty we feel that we might be growing apart from spouses), for loss, for fear, for frustration.
Our comfort through the process (for years, for all of us), is having a God who suffered in our condition along with us. I thought we were crazy, as Nouwen writes, "...this is masochism..."
But Christ did this for us. Coming into our experience. Suffering with and for us.
Nouwen reminds us that in compassion, "...it becomes possible for us to heal the sick and call the dead to life..." (page 55). If we can acknowledge our pain, truly feel it. Sit in it. Let it hurt. And then, when we're ready, we'll know. We'll let it go, and find the healing and new life that grows out of the suffering.