From Everlasting to Everlasting

From Everlasting to Everlasting

Easter Sunday

The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.
- Psalm 103:17

On this glorious day of resurrection and profound thanksgiving for the gifts we have received on our shared journey, how can we continue to be instruments of compassion as we share the gift of God’s Easter love? How can we help to lessen the amount of suffering in the world?

We now know that suffering with doesn’t mean we take on another’s suffering. It means we connect with it and with the other because we have known it ourselves. We feel with them deeply, and then we do what we can to be a conduit of God’s compassionate healing love. While it can seem overwhelming to know where to begin, perhaps the best place to begin is exactly where we are, as we are. We begin in this moment, this day, to pause, to breathe, to be present, to notice, to welcome, and then to turn to God, who hears all cries for help. We open ourselves to receive the gift of God’s healing compassion and love, knowing we are never alone.

Now that we know that practicing compassion is always a choice, we continue to cultivate the practice of compassion one choice at a time. It is a daily decision and a commitment to return to our intention to open our entire being to God—not in denial or sublimation of our suffering, but with a faith in the deeper mystery and promise of God’s infinite love and faithfulness. Choosing compassion will yield spiritual fruit, offering us emotional and spiritual sustenance in times of grief, upheaval, and uncertainty.

We practice by being present to the movement of the Spirit, to be directly and trustingly present, with ourselves, with others, and with God. It is in the present moment that we are free to listen for our inner life in God. This listening helps us to hear more clearly God’s prayer and hope for us, so that our prayer can join God’s prayer for us, for others, and for the world. 


We realize that our well-being is intimately connected with another’s well-being, and their well-being is intimately connected with ours. With this awareness that we are all interconnected, we practice compassion until it grows strong enough to be a natural response in the presence of suffering, despair, and great joy, our own, and others. This is how we will know that we are all connected and held in the love of God.

On this glorious day, may we continue our practice, not from a feeling that we need to change, but from a desire to love others and to be compassionate, as God has been so loving and compassionate to us. May we rest in the unending, loyal, unconditional, immeasurable, unbroken, whole-hearted love of God.

The mystery will not be solved, the power of the mystery will not be denied, for the transcendent presence of the holy surrounds us, will always surround us, and the greatness of the Spirit will endure forever. Be not afraid or anxious. The threshold on which you stand is the mystery of an infinite love, and an intimate love, a love that beckons you into its peace, that welcomes you with a limitless compassion. Be not afraid or anxious. Close your eyes. Open your heart. And you will know what I mean.

—Steven Charleston

It has been our joy to walk with you through this holy season of Lent to our joyous celebration of Easter!

Robbin, Jan & Scott

Close to the Heart

Close to the Heart

Holy Saturday

Reflection By Jan Kwiatkowski

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.
- Luke 24:1 (NIV)

Holding my three-month-old grandson close to my heart on the day we buried my mother, I spoke with the Catholic priest who was to officiate at her service. He had an unexpected conflict after the funeral mass, and we agreed I would lead the graveside burial service for her. My prayer book was always in the car in case of pastoral emergencies. The funeral directors found me a lovely pine branch and a dish to hold the water I would bless for us to use to bless the casket that held my mother’s body before it was lowered and covered with dirt.

I cannot begin to describe how much it meant to preside over her burial, to be able to bury my mother while surrounded by the people who loved her most. Afterwards, I stayed at her graveside. I’m one of those who needs to stand present and see hard things through to the end. I needed to see the casket lowered into the grave and the men cover it with the hard clay soil. My sister, sister-in-law, and several nieces saw me standing there and came back to stand with me, to bear witness.

I’m tearing up as I write this. We’d been through a lot in the preceding few months leading up to this moment. Important women standing with me on that difficult day was an indescribably important act of loving compassion. I needed them to be with me as much as they must have needed to come back and stand with me.

I’ll often talk with clients who speak the Christian language about how we live out Holy Week many times in our lives. The Holy Week story provides a way for us to think, pray, and act through difficult times in our lives. The story helps us to understand that not only do we experience physical deaths with the promise of resurrection, we also experience countless ways we die to ourselves and experience resurrection before we die. For example, when we leave a job or relationship and over time find renewed hope and contentment; move to a strange city and learn to make it home; set boundaries when we, or those we love, experience abuse and recover our sense of well-being; and the healing we experience when we make needed amends. What might be some examples of this in your own life?

We now approach the end of our shared journey of what it means to practice compassion with all our hearts, souls, strength, and mind. Our lives, and the world around us, will always provide opportunities to stand compassionately with others while allowing others to stand with us. If you need inspiration for continuing your practice of compassion, I invite you to hold the image of the women at the tomb close to your heart, at least as close as I held my grandson. Perhaps closer.

Holy Drama

Holy Drama

Good Friday

Reflection By Kyle Oliver

My song is love unknown
My Savior’s love to me
Love to the loveless shown
That they might lovely be.
- Samuel Crossman

I have stark childhood memories of going to church on Good Friday. The ministers wore all black. The service was very long. The prayers were very serious. We kneeled for so long my knees hurt. At one point, the priest carried in a cross made of thick, pitted railroad ties. It was truly too heavy for him to carry.

The drama showed us lots of emotions, most of them negative. I took that as a sign that I was supposed to feel a certain way: sad, guilty, burdened. I thought the message of the day was something like this: Look at all the suffering we put Jesus through! That I put him through. The least we can do is to walk this path with him for a couple hours. Maybe then we’ll be grateful for all he endured for us.

None of this is wrong, I suppose. I was right to want to explore, even experience, the emotions of the Good Friday drama for myself, rather than trying to shut them out or push them away. We should walk through this day fully open to the impact of the story.

But I don’t think I was seeing the whole meaning of that story. Compassion literally means “suffering with,” and I thought those Good Friday services were telling me that I was supposed to walk with Jesus, even suffer with Jesus. I now believe I was getting the message of the day exactly backward. Now I understand a different message, that he chooses to walk with me.

Years after those childhood services, a different priest pointed out to me that we read John’s story of Jesus’s passion on Good Friday precisely because this telling deemphasizes Jesus’s suffering. It focuses instead on his compassion for others, for the world, for us. He carries his cross himself. It is not too heavy for him, and he does not stumble. When he is thirsty, he asks for something to drink. When he sees his mother and his beloved disciple, he tells them to care for one another. And when his time has come, he declares his work finished and bows his head.

There is no cry of pain or betrayal in John’s passion story—just the King of Love reigning from the cross, showing us God’s ultimate compassion and limitless willingness to give.

It’s true that throughout his life, and throughout our lives, Jesus asks us to follow him in his way of love. But I humbly submit to you that today is a day to simply let the drama wash over us. There’s nothing we need to do or say or feel.

Today is the day when Jesus finishes his work of revealing to us God’s love and compassion.

Living Lent with Compassion

Living Lent with Compassion

Maundy Thursday

Reflection By Dawna Wall

And I wonder, particularly in a time where everything seems urgent, what the role of pause and breath is, in this season, to help us gear up for whatever this transformational moment we find ourselves in is.
- Rev. Jen Bailey

Author Joan Didion has written that it’s important to keep our old journals so that we “stay on speaking terms with our younger selves.” It’s an idea echoed by Pádraig Ó Tuama in his poem How to Belong Be Alone: “What you need to do is to remember to talk to yourself between parties” ... because “who you are is such an interesting conversation.” One of the powerful aspects of Holy Week is the opportunity to con- sider the different selves we meet in the stories unfolding. The faithful, betraying, questioning, affirming, and denying that take place are familiar and sometimes frequent conversations we might have with various parts of our own stories. Sometimes when we’re heading into unknown territory—conversations that will be difficult, a diagnosis for which we’ve been waiting, a journey of one kind or another—we nourish ourselves first, gathering with those we love in person or in blessed memory, and cloak ourselves in love.

The upper room represents a sacred nourishing gathering space because it is there we are reminded that Jesus shares a meal with all who are gathered, expressing how deeply he desires that time of being together. And like that gathering, our coming together with friends and family, or with various versions of ourselves, can sometimes be complicated, dreaded, or anticipated, and our processing of them might continue for days or years as we continue to give thanks for bread received, broken, and shared. The daily bread of questioning and wondering and pondering and grieving, the daily bread of accepting how everything is woven together to form the perfectly imperfect healing that is part of the ongoing work of compassion.

Facing unknown terrors, Jesus drew near to those he loved, sharing a meal and conversation, and then moved to the garden for prayer and solace as danger drew near. His dear friends found their eyes growing heavy as they struggled to stay present with him while also processing their own unwieldy emotions. We all know that heaviness—how difficult it is to keep looking with compassion on that which breaks our hearts.

One prayer practice that can help us stay in the space is a threefold way of praying, its own kind of triduum (the three days that tell the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection that takes place from dusk this evening through dusk on Easter Sunday).

First, we pause and notice all the feelings: despair, fear, or discomfort, and then we welcome them for a moment, allowing them to abide with us, with kindness, in the tender way we might companion a frightened toddler. And then we receive the messages they share with compassionate love.

This practice echoes what I see Jesus doing this day: first pausing to listen to the present moment and all that it holds, offering hospitality and welcome to everything, and then receiving it all with love, even as he allows space for his own emotions. Today we witness his deep compassion for others, grounded and nourished by the compassion he was able to hold for self.

Done and Left Undone

Done and Left Undone

Wednesday in Holy Week

Reflection By Jan Kwiatkowski

But I believe that the desire to please you, does in fact please you.
- Thomas Merton

Most likely you, like I did, started Lent with specific intentions and desires, and then found yourself having to adjust, perhaps letting go of some of your original intentions, or maybe you realized that you took on more than was possible this season. We all have a sense of what we did and were not able to do regarding practicing compassion toward ourselves and others. No matter where we find ourselves at this point, I don’t think it matters to Jesus what any of us did or did not accomplish. What matters is that we paid attention as best we could, learned, stayed engaged, and continue to stay engaged in the process of practicing compassion.

At Living Compass we use the metaphor of watering a garden. Whether a community garden or one we cultivate at home, what we water and pay attention to is what will grow. In our gardens we get to see both what flourishes under our careful, loving attention, as well as what suffers from not enough watering.

It helps me to remember that we never 100% get any spiritual practice right. The reality that we sometimes “don’t and can’t” because we are human can be the perfect opportunity to practice self-compassion. Let us remember to be gentle with ourselves as we pay attention to where we are in our practice of compassion and the next steps we feel ready and inspired to take. Trust that God notices our desires. Trust that compas- sion and love surround us waking and sleeping, no matter what is done and left undone.

Making it Personal: How has your understanding of compassion evolved this Lenten season? What did you water well in your compassion garden, and what still needs attention? In what way could you extend compassion to yourself as you examine what was done and what was left undone?

A World Upended

A World Upended

Tuesday in Holy Week

Reflection By Jan Kwiatkowski

We won! We Won! The world turned upside down.
- from the song Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down), from the musical Hamilton; music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda

I love Hamilton and have lost count of how many times I’ve watched it on the Disney channel. I saw the play live when it came to Milwaukee, and my alarm ringtone is My Shot. I recall the scene from Hamilton where the Revolutionary war was won despite enormous odds. The world seemed as if it had turned upside down. Given that we’ve all experienced the COVID pandemic, we have a shared sense of what it’s like to have our world turned upside down and perhaps feel like we are in survival mode.

The world must have felt like it was turning upside down for the followers of Jesus as they witnessed the events we now call Holy Week. Everything they knew and believed in seemed to be coming apart at the seams. In my professional work and personal life experiences, I have seen that when our worlds seem to be turning upside down and we are in survival mode, loving compassion for ourselves and others is hard to come by. It’s also the time compassion and love are most needed.

I’m guessing that most of the people who walked that last week with Jesus felt they were in survival mode and that compassion for self and others was hard to come by. And yet, I see compassion in Simon of Cyrene, who helped carry the cross, the women of Jerusalem who wiped the face of Jesus, and in Jesus’ loving compassionate response to them. What might we learn from them or other Holy Week characters about extending compassion and love in a world turned upside down?

Making it Personal: Have there been times in your life when it’s been harder to practice compassion than at other times, and what made that so? Were there other events in the Holy Week story that speak to you about compassion? Who is someone this week (include yourself as a choice) who needs a gesture of compassion?

Compassion and Love

Compassion and Love

Monday in Holy Week

Reflection By Jan Kwiatkowski

I am a child of God. I always carry that with me.
- Maya Angelou

No matter how many times or years I have encountered the Holy Week Scriptures, I continue to find characters I love, don’t understand, admire, or even dislike. One of my first memories of the Holy Week story was the distress I felt when hearing a story about terrible things happening to a really good person. I also remember feeling comforted that there were women close by who were with him to the end, even wiping his face with a cloth. At the same time, I was really angry at Peter when he denied him. He didn’t do anything to help Jesus.

I also remember somehow knowing that, despite everything, God loved everyone in the Holy Week story. And to this day, my experiences as a pastor, therapist, and hospice chaplain has only deepened this belief in every cell of my being. Every person you or I love, don’t understand, admire, or dislike is also a much-loved child of God.

This week, our final week in Lent, we will explore the gifts of compassion and love. Our acts of compassion are one way of reassuring our human brothers and sisters that they are deeply loved. I’ve found that identifying with a character in a scripture story helps me with my practice of compassion. Despite how I feel about their choices and actions within the story’s context, I create a backstory that allows me to give them the benefit of doing the best they could. Transferring that practice to the present, I might tell myself that a driver cut me off because they need to get to the hospital for a family emergency. What might each character in the Holy Week story teach you about practicing compassion with all God’s much-loved children, including yourself?

Making it Personal: I invite you to choose a Holy Week character to focus on as you read, pray, and reflect this week. What drew you to choose this particular person? Is there a character you avoided choosing? Reflect on that.

God’s Liberating Love

God’s Liberating Love

Palm Sunday

Reflection By Deborah Woolsey

You must be a world unto yourself and with your difficult thing in your center, drawing you to it. And one day, with its weight, its gravity, it will have its effects beyond you, on a destiny, on a person, on God. Then, when it’s ready, God will enter into your difficult thing. And do you know anywhere else where you and God can meet?
- Rainer Maria Rilke

For years people of all walks of life have asked the question: “Why is there suffering?” Societies, individuals, institutions, religions, academic, and scientific disciplines have all attempted to give an answer. Most often suffering is perceived as punishment for bad behavior or the consequence of bad choices.

One of the Latin definitions for passio means suffering and com means with. Today, on Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday, the church turns to Jesus for God’s response to the question. As we witness Jesus going through the excruciating suffering of the betrayal and abandonment of his friends, a mockery of a trial, physical violence, and death, we are not given a reason for the why of suffering, we are given a who, someone who loves all of humanity so much they are willing to suffer with us. Jesus does not show us an angry god who desires punishment. He shows us a God who loves us so much that God is willing to suffer with us.

This response is empowering and helpful for me because it liberates me from the shame of judgment and helps me accept suffering as part of life. It also helps me to discern the difference between redemptive and non-redemptive suffering. For example, when I was recovering from two hip replacement surgeries, I went through a long and difficult recovery period. Seeing that time through the lens of Jesus suffering with me helped me recognize and receive the compassion offered by my caregivers, family, and friends who were able to be with me physically, mentally, and spiritually. It also helped me respond compassionately to the medical caregivers who were suffering stress exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. By caring for each other we were able to alleviate both our burdens. Even though it might persist, this type of suffering doesn’t last forever. It will change, things will get better, even if slowly, and we simply need to keep going, which we can do because we know we are not alone. That is what makes it redemptive, and it is just as true for the other types of suffering that also offer hope for healing change.

However, there are other forms of suffering that do not have a light at the end of the tunnel. Non-redemptive suffering happens when we get stuck in a toxic situation, such as an abusive workplace, school, relationship, any place where there is no compassion and no hope of change. In those circumstances, sometimes the best and most compassionate thing we can do is to distance ourselves from it.

By suffering with us, Jesus embodies how God’s love truly is liberating and life-giving. Knowing this, when we suffer we are better able to recognize God’s freeing love and, from this place of healing and returning wholeness, be more compassionate with ourselves and others.

Saying No—a Compassionate Choice

Saying No—a Compassionate Choice

Compassion and Well-Being

Reflection By Jan Kwiatkowski

Self-care is a Divine Responsibility.
- Anonymous

We all have days when practicing compassion comes more effortlessly than on other days. The demands of practicing compassion can sometimes feel overwhelming because the needs in our world are so great. In these overwhelming moments, we bump up against discovering our human limits. We’ve been taught to give, not count the cost, and to be selfless rather than selfish. Yet if we continue to give at our own expense, we can exhaust ourselves and become resentful, numb, irritable, even depressed. John Pavlovitz describes this as feeling “really tired, marrow-deep, hope-sucking, soul-choking exhausted.”

Not only is it not possible to be selfless all the time, it isn’t good for our souls. We live within finite bodies and if we put the needs of others so thoroughly ahead of our own too much of the time, we can do injury to the body, mind, and spirit God gave us. Taking care of others at the expense of our own well-being can keep us from doing the work God calls us to do.

We can learn much from noticing the compassionate choice Jesus made— in the midst of his demanding ministry tending to the great needs in his world—to also take care of himself. Recognizing his dependence on God, we are told that Jesus would withdraw to private places because he needed to pause, pray, and reconnect with the Source of Compassion. He chose to say “no” to others for a short time so he could say “yes” again to living into the will of his Father. Maybe we need to reframe choosing self-care, not as selfishness, but as a humble recognition of our finite self, needing to pause, pray, and reconnect with our Source of Compassion.

Making it Personal: What is your initial response to this reflection? Have there been times when extending compassion to others becomes too much and you became resentful, numb, or soul-choking tired? Where and how are you being nudged to say “no” to others so that you might be more compassionate toward yourself?

Everything Is Connected

Everything Is Connected

Compassion and Well-Being

Reflection By Robbin Brent

When we talk about God, we’re talking about the very straightforward affirmation that everything has a singular, common source and is infinitely, endlessly, deeply connected.
- Rob Bell

The understanding that everything is connected is foundational to the Living Compass Model for Well-Being. We introduced this on p. 9 with the image of a kinesthetic mobile, describing how, when we touch one area of well-being on the mobile we affect all the other areas. Similarly, as with the spider’s web we explored in week one, if we touch one strand, the entire web vibrates.

We’ve explored the idea of everything being connected throughout the reflections this week. Our ability to recognize and invite in love and care for ourselves is connected to our ability to love and care for others. Once we’ve experienced the gift of healing and wholeness that accompanies loving mercy and self-compassion, we now have a gift we can share with others. We reflected on how loving others by learning how we want to be loved is connected to deep well-being. And how a practice of compassion enhances our desire for others to be happy, as well as our own desire to be happy.

Everything is connected by the sacred strands in the infinite web of God’s love. These sturdy strands include compassion, mercy, intimacy, generosity, virtue, reverence, wisdom, patience, truthfulness, steadfast determination, loving-kindness, and equanimity, all coming from the innermost depths of our being. When we make a commitment to cultivate these and bring them into our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with our planet, we grow and strengthen the kind of compassion that has the power to bless and heal the world.

Making it Personal: What is your response to the idea that everything is interconnected in a sacred web of God’s love? Have you experienced the connection between one area of well-being and the other areas described above and illustrated through the mobile on p. 9? What other examples come to mind?

Be an Encourager

Be an Encourager

Compassion and Well-Being

Reflection By Scott Stoner

Be an encourager. The world has enough critics already.
- Dave Willis

l Iive in Wisconsin, and one of my favorite rites of spring is getting my bike out and ready for the first outdoor ride of the season. One of the first things I need to do is pump up the tires because most of the air leaks out of them over our long winters.

Have you ever tried to ride a bike with an under-inflated or even a flat tire? If so, you know how hard and bumpy the ride can be and how much effort it takes to get it to move. I think of this as a metaphor for the importance of compassion and encouragement, both for others and for ourselves.

To make our travels through life a bit less challenging, all of us can use a little air in our tires, a little extra encouragement, from time to time. Just as the air slowly leaks out of bike tires over a long winter, life itself can deflate us over time and our self-esteem and sense of well-being may suffer. When this happens, expressions of compassion and encouragement, for ourselves and others, can go a long way toward pumping up our emotional “tires.”

Be an encourager. The first three words in the quote above by Dave Willis are so simple that it can be easy to miss their power. Offering encouraging words to your child, partner, friend, colleague, family member, or even to a stranger, is so simple, yet we often can see the positive effects immediately. It’s that easy and that powerful. Our compassion and encouragement might be just the air someone needs to lift them up and make their ride just a little smoother and more manageable. And remember, it is nice to share this same generosity of spirit with oneself.

Making it Personal: How could you be more accepting and encouraging of yourself? Think of something specific. Is there someone in your life who could also use some encouragement right now? Again, think of something specific you could do or say.

The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule

Compassion and Well-Being

Reflection By Robbin Brent

In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.
- Matthew 7:12

Karen Armstrong included the Golden Rule found in Matthew in her compelling definition of compassion: “To put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes, to feel her pain as though it were our own, and to enter generously into his point of view. That is why compassion is aptly summed up in the Golden Rule, which asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.”

Embedded in this definition of compassion and also in the Golden Rule is the wisdom, “we can’t give away what we don’t have.” Both point toward the importance of first knowing how we want to be treated, how we want to be loved. How can we accompany others compassionately if we don’t know that for ourselves? How can we treat others well if we don’t know what it is like to treat ourselves well?

We cannot extend compassion if we don’t first know self-compassion. If we don’t learn what causes us pain and then offering ourselves compassion, we will have a harder time recognizing suffering in another. We will find it challenging to respond with a desire to alleviate their pain if we haven’t first known that desire as a compassionate response toward our own pain.

A practice of self-compassion offers a foundation of stability and well- being that we can count on both in times of struggle and success. From that foundation we can begin to know—as Martha Bourlakas wrote so beautifully about in last Sunday’s reflection—that we, and others, are beloved children of God.

Making it Personal: What do you think of the connection between practicing self-compassion and our ability to offer compassion to another? Between self-compassion and well-being? Have you found that extending compassion toward yourself helped you to be more responsive to the needs of others?

Clothe Yourself with Compassion

Clothe Yourself with Compassion

Compassion and Well-Being

Reflection By Scott Stoner

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
- Colossians 3:12

Jesus calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves. His call is one of the two great commandments, to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

While Jesus does direct us, as his followers, to do this, we are wise to realize that not only is offering compassion to others central to our faith, but it is also foundational to our well-being.

The practice of compassion is both a fruit of, and a contributor to, well-being. To realize the truth of this, we need only think of a time when our hearts and emotions have been tense, anxious, angry, and constricted. When we feel like this, this is our smaller, ego-based self. And when our smaller self is dominant, it is important to recognize that our well-being is compromised and that we are not in a place to enhance another’s well-being.

Now think of a time when your larger, spiritual self was dominant. This is the self that responds from an expanded heart and soul. From this expanded place, as the words of the Scripture above say, we are able to clothe ourselves with “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” We experientially recognize that our well-being, as well as the well-being of others, is truly enhanced when living from this larger, spiritual space.

Just as we can decide how to dress ourselves each day in order to look our best, we can also decide to clothe ourselves with loving actions, including compassion, in order to respond from the heart.

Making it Personal: Read the verse from Colossians above and notice what speaks to you. Can you recognize when your smaller, ego-centered self is activated vs. when your larger, spiritual self is present? What might help you to make a choice to clothe yourself with more compassion each day?

Compassion and Well-Being

Compassion and Well-Being

Theme for the Week

Reflection By Scott Stoner

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
- Dalai Lama

This week we will focus on the relationship between compassion and well-being. The above quote from the Dalai Lama captures how compassion enhances the well-being of others and ourselves.


Martha Bourlakas reminded us in her writing yesterday of the importance of self-compassion, something we will focus on in other reflections this week. For now, I want to say that caring for our own well-being is essential for our ability to offer kindness and mercy to others.

I love the Prayer of St. Francis because it is a prayer that invites us to be instruments of peace, love, kindness, and compassion in a world that so very much needs all the spiritual nourishment we can give (full prayer on p. 79). As a guitarist, when I read the words make us an instrument, I think of how I cannot produce music for others to enjoy if I do not take the time to tune the strings before I play. This always reminds me that I need to regularly keep my well-being in tune so that I am able to offer compassion more easily, which can enhance the well-being of others.

We also know that caring for the suffering of others has a positive impact on our own well-being. In his reflection for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Chris Yaw shared a study that confirms this truth. We are called to love our neighbor and ourselves, and keeping a healthy balance between the two is essential to both our well-being, and the well-being of others.

Making it Personal: What are your initial thoughts about the connection between compassion and well-being? How do you recognize if your well-being, your “instrument,” is out of tune? What helps you get back in tune and stay in tune?

Embracing Belovedness

Embracing Belovedness

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Reflection By Martha Bourlakas

Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
- John 11:40

I have heard The Word is very near you for most of my adult life, but I wasn’t getting it. I knew I should understand that the infinite love of God and the Universe is not reserved for me only after everyone else has received theirs. I should be able to integrate this Word into my heart and life, living into God’s intimacy with me. My relationship with God and myself changed when I realized the shoulds were part of the problem. Instead of where I should be, here I am. When I receive God’s love and compassion for my Self first, as I am, I acknowledge the power of the Holy Spirit moving and acting within me.

My realization began with the word selfish, a word our religious systems, our culture, our families have long taught us—especially women—is the worst possible word. Isn’t it selfish of me to address the love and care I need, before considering others? After all, I am a Mom, a wife, a daughter, a friend. If I don’t put all the love and attention towards everyone else first, I am not following the Christian teachings of self-sacrifice I have always learned. The Holy Spirit within me was not settled on this idea, and she got blow-y, began stirring up things within me. I picked up my pen and started writing.

For two years, every single day, I wrote in my journal, I am a beloved child of God. This was my way of praying, understanding, believing it is not selfish of me to put myself first in receiving God’s love and care. I need and deserve this wondrous, expansive love, here and now. God’s abundant love is always available, not meted out after we have done all the right things. The words are teaching me that the best way for me to navigate marriage, parenting, friendships, work—all of it—is to turn God’s love and compassion first toward myself. From this love and relationship stem all other abundant, life-giving relationships and work.

The Holy Spirit blows through our bodies, our souls, our world, in a different way from what history and culture have taught us, expressing God’s creative radicalness. She teaches us that The Word, Belovedness, Wisdom are urgent, immediate, not rewarded after we accomplish our tasks, eat the rainbow, exercise, say all the right things. She knows if we are last, our outward love and service is fractured, resentful, full of loaded-up shoulds—not the kind of love we all need and deserve to receive. When we acknowledge and incorporate intimate love and care for ourselves, we begin to structure our lives differently, rooting ourselves in acts and movements of belovedness and ease.

I hope when I am 65, maybe 95, I am still writing in my journal, reminding myself I am a beloved child of God. Embracing belovedness can be a slow process, but I should not be any further along, or at any other place, other than where I am. On days when I struggle, face-to-face with the-Martha-that-should, I turn my face to the springtime sun, stay right where I am—in my compassion, in my belovedness, with my pen and paper. The Martha that is.

Being There Matters

Being There Matters

Compassion and Mercy

Reflection By Jan Kwiatkowski

At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful Mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last.
- from the hymn At the Cross Her Station Keeping, written by Jacopone da Todi; translation by Edward Caswall

On Thursday, Scott Stoner explored the Seven Acts of Mercy and how they offer specific ways we can offer compassion and mercy to those who are suffering in ways visible, tangible, and obvious. As a therapist and pastor, in addition to the visible suffering of others, I also encounter the not-so-obvious pain of anxiety, fear, loss, depression, hopelessness, and loneliness.

Our society values being anything but vulnerable. Admitting our own need for mercy and compassion and recognizing countless quiet cries for mercy and compassion around us are counter-cultural and yet what our world so desperately needs. Compounding this issue, those silenced and often-shamed people suffering from anxiety, fear, loss, depression, hopelessness, and loneliness often hide in ways that make it hard for others to respond to with compassion and mercy. In these situations, it is important to remember that even when we don’t see a way of responding concretely to the needs of those quietly suffering, the gift of being present is enough.

Just a few stood at the foot of the cross, not able to do anything other than be there. Standing at the foot of the cross and holding each other and the dying Lord of Life in compassionate mercy and presence is an example beyond words of the value of our presence and compassion.

Making it Personal: Describe a time when the only thing you could do was to be present and what that was like for you. Has there been a time when someone was there for you during a dark time in your life? What was that like for you? If there is someone in your life who might be open to the mercy of compassionate presence, what might be a simple way you could be present for them?

Willing to Wait

Willing to Wait

Compassion and Mercy

Reflection By Robbin Brent

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"Patient” is not an attribute my family and close friends would choose to describe me. It might not even make it into the top ten. Yet, as the above quote tells us, patient trust is what will allow us to better see how God’s work in the world is unfolding, and how God is asking us to more fully participate in God’s dreams for the world made manifest through us.

Patience and compassion are closely related at their root and can mean to suffer, to endure, to experience, or to wait. They also are defined as God’s passion, as God’s great love and hope for the world. So if patience, compassion, mercy, and God’s love are interwoven, how do we get better at being patient, of trusting more fully in God’s timing? In yesterday’s reflection, Scott Stoner shared the Seven Acts of Mercy as important ways of living compassionately through what we do. He invited us to a practice of prayerfully seeking God’s guidance for how we might offer one of those acts of mercy to someone in our lives. This is a wonderful way to practice putting our trust more fully in God’s timing.

If we can be patient with ourselves as we learn to be more fully present with another in their suffering, and to respond out of a desire to help in some way, we are better able to call upon the gifts, or fruits, of compassion: kindness, mercy, empathy, goodness, and forgiveness. Patience and trust will also strengthen our ability to notice when God is asking us to be the arms of love and mercy in the world. We get better at trusting God’s timing more than our own.

Making it Personal: What do you think about the connection between having patience and trust and being better able to respond with compassion and mercy to the needs of the world, others, and ourselves? What is one practice that might help you to be more patient? Do you have a quote, poem, or prayer that might inspire your desire to trust more deeply in the way God is working through you in the world?

Acts of Mercy

Acts of Mercy

Compassion and Mercy

Reflection By Scott Stoner

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?
- James 2:14

For many centuries the Church has taught the importance of what are known as the Seven Acts of Mercy, which are to: give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the prisoners, and to bury the dead. The first six of these come from Matthew 25, where Jesus says, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt. 25:35-36). The Church later added the seventh act, to bury the dead, which included providing a proper burial for all people, as well as caring for those who are grieving.

The importance of the Acts of Mercy can also be seen in the passage above from James. To paraphrase, one could say, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, to say you have compassion but do not express your compassion through acts of mercy?”

As a person of faith, I see the Acts of Mercy as an invitation and a reminder to put my faith into action. When I am conscious of these acts and pray to be open to seeing a specific way I might express one of these acts, I always encounter an opportunity to do so. I invite you to bring these Acts of Mercy into your prayers and see what opportunities open up for you to express compassion to others.

Making it Personal: Is there a particular act of the Seven Acts of Mercy that you feel called to offer to someone in your life? Are there others acts of mercy that you would add to this list? If so, what are they?

The Heart of the Heart of God

The Heart of the Heart of God

Compassion and Mercy

Reflection By Robbin Brent

Can a woman forget her nursing-child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
- Isaiah 49:15

Mercy is where we encounter the fullness of the heart of God. The Greek and Hebrew root words for mercy translated include steadfast love, goodness, forgiveness, strength, lovingkindness, healing care and love, and innermost depth (womb).

Our Lady of the Sign and Mary of the Cosmos are two icons that depict Mary with an infant or a globe in her womb. These images reveal a God who has created us and loves us as a mother or father loves their beloved infant from the core of their being. This awareness has expanded my understanding of God as One who profoundly loves and cares for each and every one of us as beloved children, offering mercy through life-giving nourishment, care, love, and protection from the center of the center of God’s own heart.

When we respond compassionately toward ourselves and others, with all our heart, from the innermost depth or core of our being, the compassion and mercy we offer are medicine for our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our souls. They heal and transform because through them we experience God’s ever-present love and care for us. God’s mercy always pours forth from God’s healing love because both come from the same source, the heart of the heart of God.

I find great comfort in knowing that whenever I can practice compassion and mercy, toward myself or another, I am serving as a bridge for God’s healing love.

Making it Personal: What do you think of the idea of God loving us from the deepest part of God, as deeply as a mother or father loves an infant growing in the womb? Have you ever experienced healing or reconciliation through an act of lovingkindness? If yes, what was that like?

Mercy and Forgiveness

Mercy and Forgiveness

Compassion and Mercy

Reflection By Scott Stoner

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
- Luke 6:36-37

One characteristic of mercy is that it is the free offering of compassion to another by someone who has the freedom to choose whether to give or withhold that offering. And so we see in the passage above that forgiveness is included as an expression of mercy.

Extending forgiveness to someone who has hurt us is an expression of mercy because our decision to offer forgiveness is a choice we are free to make. When we extend forgiveness, we act in a way that shows mercy to the person who has caused the hurt.

I remember many years ago when I chose to offer forgiveness to someone who had hurt me. I discovered that not only was I offering a gift of mercy to the other person, but it also turned out to be a gift for me. I felt lighter and freer as I let go of my hurt and resentment.

The mercy of God is both our source and our model for being merciful. This is why Jesus said, “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.” We are the recipients of God’s mercy, and then, in turn, we are called to be the ones who extend that mercy to others. Just as we are offered the gift of forgiveness from God, we also seek to provide that gift of forgiveness to others.

Making it Personal: What do you think of the idea that forgiveness is an act of mercy? Is there someone in your life to whom you would like to extend the mercy of forgiveness? What benefits do you see for others and for yourself when you choose to extend compassion and mercy?