Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.
Interpretation
Compassion requires effort and understanding, as it involves connecting with others in their moments of vulnerability.
This quote highlights the complexity of compassion, showing that it is not a natural instinct to relate to others' suffering. Instead, true compassion demands an active, empathetic engagement with those who are struggling, acknowledging their weaknesses and vulnerabilities rather than simply seeking to alleviate their pain or distance ourselves from it.
In practice
In a speech about mental health awareness, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of being compassionate towards those struggling with mental illness.
The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides in the immense sorrow that has gone before....our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering β for us. And calling us to share in Godβs suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.
Only children believe they're capable of everything.
Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.
No one β¦ can entirely step out of his time, that despite his keenness of vision his thinking is in many ways bound to be influenced by the mentality of his time
One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.
The Ultimate and Highest leave taking is leaving God for GOD, leaving your notion of God for an Experience of That which transcends all notions.
Very well then; emancipation from usury and money, that is, from practical, real Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our time.
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