Compassion is a word that we use a lot as Unitarian Universalists both in every day conversations directing and guiding our ethical practices and attitudes and in our attempts to address the Divine as “Spirit of love and compassion.”
Compassion is an important word to us, and so it should come as no surprise that we are giving the entire month of October to the theme of “Cultivating Compassion.” Consider our Unitarian Universalist values: justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, interdependence and generosity. At the center of those six values is love itself, and there is a sense in which compassion is a key ingredient in each of those seven values.
Compassion is a word, though. And, like all our other words, especially nouns, it is an attempt by speakers of this language to give a name to an experience. What is the experience of compassion? When I say or think the word compassion, I almost instinctively reach to put a hand over my heart. I connect the word compassion to heart-felt experiences between me and other human and other beings. I suspect that I am not alone in this. And, there is more to the experience of compassion.
The word itself is made up of old French and Latin roots that mean “to suffer together with” another being. I don’t immediately think of suffering when I use the word compassion, but when I look into that feeling in my heart, it almost always contains some experience of my own suffering. My experience of compassion invites me to consider your suffering, allows me to experience suffering together with you, requires me to notice your suffering, conjures my curiosity about how I might respond to your suffering, and calls me to be courageous in league with you about the suffering we hold together.
Compassion involves my experience of suffering and becomes a kind of co-suffering when I see it in others. It invites, allows, requires, conjures and calls me to you and to other beings who suffer. When we look at compassion this way, it may be one of the most powerful experiences that we can have. It becomes a way of life.
~Bob Patrick
