We continue today with reflections on compassion. Christian dispositions of compassion re-member the body by acknowledging, listening, and taking care of bodies who mourn. Dispositions of compassion allow for re-membering to be more than recollection. This healing work honors the body's complicated need to tell a story and to grieve. Compassion holds grieving bodies by laying hands, anointing with oil, helping them to fall to their knees in prayer, or by simply breathing in and out (because there may be times when that is all a body can do). Compassion receives, accepts, and meanders as embodied stories ebb, flow, and even contradict themselves. This past week I have made multiple trips to the hospital to be with a man who is in the ICC unit. He has a vent in place and cannot communicate with anything more than his eyes and a gripping hand. First, I have become so much more aware of how much a person can say through their touch and with their eyes. But here is also a case of someone who cannot even breath on his own. All his body can do is receive the touch and looks and voices of others. He must count on the breathing of a bedside machine - and yet there is a vitality of life that longs to be made whole. I have also learned again that though I am 'making the visit,' he is offering some of his story - a vulnerable side that allows me in. Our stories intersect in that small room and in his eyes, I see love, hope, fear, power, and weakness. It has helped me re-member those who it is so easy to forget. Connection: Sometimes, touch is so important - and then the silence between breathes and word - and then the look into the face of another one of God's beloved children. In and through all of that we all take part in that wonder called compassion. Gather us as one, O God, and help us breath with one another and learn more of that gentle Spirit that make us all whole. Amen. |
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