COMPASSION
Is genuine compassion to be found anywhere in this world today?
As I look about me I find the events now in progress bring about some sharp changes in attitudes concerning others. I examine my personal life and find I have less tolerance for view held and expressed by certain individuals and groups than I did in more settled times in my life. We are living in unusual times right now - all of us - not just the people of the United States – and usual attitudes become warped to meet urgent situations.
Obviously many of us feel differently about a great many things since September 11 of the past year. It is right that we should set out with a determination to bring about changes which would eliminate the evils we see in the acts of others which hurt us or our friends.
Compassion in whatever form it might manifest itself - benevolence, charity, clemency, commiseration, empathy, grace humaneness – still abound in much that we think and do, but we have to learn to look for such opportunities in different places.
Compassion might well be seen as not being a part of our war on Terrorism, for instance, but more of it is there than we might think. The agony of leadership in such times is a terrible burden to place upon one man and I think it wise that we tend to divide such responsibilities. In wartime some standards are, for the moment, set aside to assure they have a future.
Our thoughts turn, naturally, to religious and medical groups when we think of compassion. One views the recent development of more business-like, more efficient, forms of medical services with suspicion but I know of physicians who, regardless of the form of governing control under which they must work today, continue to show compassion and special consideration for those in their care. There are still doctors and nurses, as well as Technicians and pharmacists and others, who stand ready to “go the second mile” with their patients. I can testify to that in a very personal sense. I owe by very life today to a skilled surgeons, doctors, medical personnl of all levels and, yes, a helicopter crew all of whom did their job with special attention to my urgent need.
Compassion lives. It abides in the person of that surgeon and her capable team. The initial touch of her small hands, the soft encourage in her voice assured me I was in the presence of a compassionate, caring person. We see only small portions of the compassion expressed in so many personal ways by individuls. That is where compassion, commiseration and other such qualities are best nurtured and wherein the best grow. Within the composite view of groups and nations they will be less obvious. Charity may well be there, but it is subservient to demand of the present and preservation of the body politic. It, at its finest, is to be sought at the personal, individual level.
We can see only a small portion of the good that is being accomplished around the world. God's purpose, whatever it might be, is being worked out steadily and with unremitting zeal. Just because we cannot see it being done in terms we understand, does not mean it has been stopped.
A.L.M. November 30, 2002 [c558wds]
