Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Compassion

Reverend Alicia McNary Forsey, PhD
May 6, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

Opening Words:

We often think of love in terms of emotion or need. We say that we are “in love” when we desperately need another person, when we consider him or her indispensable to our happiness, even our life. But such love is only a form of self-love, mainly concerned with out own needs and happiness. True love — mature love — is not based on emotion or need but on our willingness to go out of ourselves and to be truly present to another, truly aware of another. It means being one with another, regaining our original nature, becoming what we were created to be. This kind of love is called Compassion.

— excerpt from A Very Great Gift

How do we stay the path of compassion in a world that is so full of suffering? Mature love is difficult to cultivate in ourselves because it is not always simple or comfortable or without pain. True Compassion requires us, as it does in the narrative of Jesus, to go against the status quo — to become a threat to the powerful, to wrestle with our own fears: of loss, of pain, of a kind of suffering from which we cannot escape if we wish to become truly compassionate beings.

This is no picnic. Just about everything we are encountering in our daily lives leaves us feeling like separate drops of water in a huge waterfall — each of us bumping our way down a steep, rocky mountain. Separate drops of water, aware of others falling with us, but alone in our own falling.

Separating ourselves, we think, protects us from what we fear. I see the same homeless man sitting on the same corner of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley almost every time I walk to the library at the university. His hair is matted, his clothes are in shreds, his nails are very long and very dirty. I gave him money once, and when he took it his fingernails ran across the palm of my hand. He said “God Bless You”, but I was already thinking about the closest place where I could wash my hands. I have not given him money since that time because I can’t stand the thought of feeling those filthy nails on my hand — and more. I can’t stand the thought of being in what appears to be his condition. I can’t identify with him. What I fear in myself prevents me from seeing him or being with him even for a few seconds.

I have a friend who loves everything science-fiction. He collects the books of his favorite science-fiction authors and keeps them all together on his bookshelves. He tapes all of the episodes of science-fiction favorites on television. He calls me when a special episode of Star Trek is showing, like the last episode of the series with Captain Piquard, when he played the flute that was recently sold at a well-known auction house in New York. My friend knows I grew up in what you might call a science-fiction household. He recently informed me that I must, must, must watch a show on television called “Battle Star Galactica”. I, brought up without television, am circumspect about watching much of it now. I didn’t get around to watching the show, so he put an episode on my computer. Then, on a Unitarian Universalist Ministers’ chat line I saw a post from a minister I respect suggesting that we would do well to watch Battle Star Galactica — lots of sermon material in these episodes. So, I watched the one episode on my computer.

Like Star Trek, its narrative is centered on the life of a community of individuals who live on a space ship. You can’t live on a space ship without worrying about being attacked by colonialists who want your space, or defenders of a space you have just accidentally trespassed. The “Other” or the enemy in this episode is one that anyone here this morning who work in the computer industry will appreciate. The enemy was a robot programmed to destroy himself and everyone on the space ship. However, he also possessed every human trait you can think of. He loved a woman on the ship. He had feelings, was intelligent and human in every respect — except for the fact that his priority was a program which would necessitate his destruction of everything and everyone he cared about in his human form.

The human that the robot/human loved held an important position on the ship. They were together in love, but eventually the program of his robot-self commanded him to destroy everything. This was somehow discovered. The robot/human was captured and put in a glassed-in space which opened out onto outer space. The officers of the space ship knew that he must be destroyed, and the space he was captured in was a sort of trash disposal system, activated by the push of a button on the inside of the space ship. All of the officers of the ship were standing in front of the glassed-in space, looking at him with almost no expression. Rather like the requirement that witnesses observe an execution in our prison system. The robot/human knew that this was the end for him, and he saw that the woman he loved was standing just behind the chief officers. Just before the button is pushed, the robot/ human put his hand up to the glass. The human in him reached out with all of his human self to the humans on the other side of the glass. No one moved. This creature wanted to blow them all up. Then the woman he loves steps forward and puts her hand exactly over his. For one brief moment, both have crossed over the bridge of their fears and their separation. In that very brief moment, they are one in being fully human. The woman has had to deal with the knowledge that she loves a man who would kill her. The robot/human has to deal with the fact that he has been programmed to kill the one he loves and the members of his community. Then the captain pushes the button and he is separated.

Suicide bombers are programed. Fundamentalist Christians are programed. How am I programed? How are you programed? We are programed to think that we are separate, even while we proclaim the interdependent web of all existence.

Compassion is about more than being one with another and regaining our original nature. Compassion asks us to dive deeply into the turmoil, sadness, pain, suffering and grief within ourselves before we begin to take a step toward being one with another. It is a difficult, painful and healing process.

Matthew Fox says that compassion “is a kind of fire … it disturbs, it surprises, it ignites, it burns, it sears and it warms. Compassion incinerates denial; it especially warms and melts cold hearts, cold structures, frozen minds and self-satisfied lifestyles. Those who are touched by compassion have their lives turned upside down. That is not necessarily a bad thing.” (From Creation Spirituality)

When Roshi Suzuki first came to the United States he was taken to Yosemite National Park. He was quite impressed with the waterfalls, and said:

When I first came to this country I went to Yosemite National Park, and there I saw some huge waterfalls. The highest one there is 1,340 feet tall. From a distance, it looks like a curtain of water is thrown from the top of the mountain. It does not seem to come down very swiftly, as you might expect; it seems to come down very slowly because of the distance. And the water does not come down as one stream, but is separated into many tiny streams.

Suzuki thought it must be a very difficult experience for each drop of water to come down from the top of such a high mountain. It takes time, you know, a long time for the water finally to reach the bottom of the waterfall and rejoin the river. And it seemed to Suzuki that our human life may be like this. It is often in our separation that we experience difficulties.

During my brief time with you here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto I have noticed the feeling of separation that causes suffering, though I also see many remarkable people who have made this church their community. Who have made this church, period. And this church is engaged with the same kinds of issues as many other Unitarian Universalist churches. So it is the being human as well as the being an institution that strives to live out of what you value that may sometimes require of you what a church with programming through dogma and creed would not expect. How superficial is a feeling of oneness when it is how you are programmed? How deep is the knowing of oneness through difficult, sometimes painful work on oneself — guided by risk, reason and trust? When you feel like you are struggling through turbulent waters, or headed for a storm, stop your busy life, stop your distractions, take a vacation from your email and remember that water is water, humans are human and you all are on this ship together.

 

Reflection: How Do you Motivate & Energize Compassion? by Reverend John Beverly Butcher