Compassion Says
About thirty years ago Charles Figley, the Paul Henry Kurzweg Chair in Disaster Mental Health at Tulane University, coined the phrase compassion fatigue to refer to
“absorbing information and often the suffering of others through empathy. It happens when a helping professional experiences exhaustion due to caring for someone, and can lead to profound emotional and physical erosion that takes place when helpers are unable to refuel and regenerate themselves.”
More recently the phrase has come into common use to signify the experience of being overwhelmed when we encounter heartwrenching story after heartwrenching story of loss, death, cruelty, illness, natural disaster–particularly but not exclusively when such stories are accompanied by an “ask”. Our hearts can only bear so much suffering, it seems, even suffering far removed from our daily lives. We can only care so much before we ourselves begin to suffer sleeplessness, depression, self-medication. Or, alternately, before we begin to become incurred, to turn away and to tune out as gestures of self-preservation.
This morning’s sermon title comes from Rabbi Esther Adler who said, “There is a hierarchy of responses when we encounter suffering. Pity says, ‘I see your pain.’ Sympathy says, ‘I understand your pain.’ Empathy says, ‘I feel your pain.’ Compassion says, ‘I am with you in your pain and I will help.’ I think we all want to be compassionate, to answer the call of someone else’s pain with whatever help we can give. Still, compassion fatigue is real, and I know I’m not alone in often feeling stretched beyond my capacity to witness, feel and respond to the pain of others in any meaningful way.
The world holds too much suffering. Too much for our hearts to hold without breaking. And too much for our minds to make sense of, such that these days the compassion that threatens to fatigue us, to mire us in paralyzing despair, is often all mixed up with fear and outrage and moral indignation. I don’t need to tell you what it feels like or how it affects our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical health or how it impacts our ability to carry out our daily lives. I can tell you what I think is a piece of good news: the antidote to fear, outrage and moral indignation is the same as the antidote to the threat of compassion fatigue. It’s a two step process available to us all and within our capacity to access.
The first, more challenging step, is to allow ourselves to feel the feeling. Feel compassion, fear, outrage, moral indignation. Resist the impulse to deny or bury or distract ourselves away from them. We already know that doesn’t work.
We might stop watching, listening to or reading the news. We might delete all your social media apps. But somehow the state of the world seeps through: word that another friend has lost their job at the CDC, another family member’s military career destroyed by an unjust policy, another day of starvation in Gaza, another U.S. city invaded by forces sent unlawfully by the current administration, another acquaintance whose immunocompromised health is further threatened by changes in vaccine policy.
The stories seep into conversations with friends and colleagues, are woven into family text threads, season late night talk show monologues. Turning our back to the sources of fear, outrage, moral indignation, to the situations that call forth our compassion, doesn’t protect us. And self-medication in whatever form–alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, obsessive gaming–only makes us sick, or sends us into debt, or estranges us from people and activities that feed our spirits.
Occasional, momentary distractions–walks on the beach, funny movies, cell phone-free meals with beloved companions–these are important acts of self-care, to the extent that they refresh us and strengthen us to then turn back to witness the suffering and the sources of our fear, outrage, and moral indignation with wide, curious and courageous eyes, with robust and resilient wills.
After that, the second, easy step is to take action to help the person or group for whom we’re feeling compassion, take action toward stopping, reversing, repairing the situation that sparks our fear, outrage, or moral indignation. That might sound like the more difficult, even insurmountable task. But big, heroic gestures are not necessary. Doing it all immediately, once and for all time is neither necessary nor even possible. Small, meaningful actions help the person for whom we feel compassion and begin to resolve the situations that scare or outrage us, and help us, too. Small meaningful actions are the antidote to compassion fatigue, the inoculation against despair born of all that threatens to overwhelm us.
A colleague texted me two minutes before we were scheduled to have a phone meeting earlier this week. They had requested the meeting to seek my counsel on a tricky issue in their congregation, but they needed to postpone it to some later date due to a family crisis that had just layered itself on top of their already stressful professional situation. They apologized profusely for having set up the meeting and then canceling at the last minute. My reply: No apology necessary. You’re going to be where you need to be.
Those words sounded familiar and nagged at me for hours. Then I remembered. Just weeks into my first year of divinity school, I was scheduled to attend the fall UU district gathering in a nearby town. A minister I’d never met had agreed to pick me up on campus and give me a ride. Then my grandfather died and I got strep throat. In my double misery, as I was trying to decide whether or not to fly to Minnesota for the funeral, worried about the consequences of missing days of classes so early in the semester but wanting to be at home and with family, I called the minister to tell her I wouldn’t be able to go to the gathering, and to apologize for causing her to rearrange her schedule to accommodate giving me a ride and then canceling at the last minute.
Her reply: No apology necessary. You will be where you need to be.
This week I couldn’t do anything to help resolve my colleague’s professional or family situations or even alleviate the fear and anxiety they were experiencing in response to their family emergency, but I could help with the guilt they felt about canceling our appointment. You’re going to be where you need to be. I was with them in their suffering, and I took action to help. Letting them let themselves off the hook.
My not-yet elder colleague all those years ago couldn’t do anything to help allay my anxiety about missing classes or soothe my grief or reduce my fever but she could and did help with the guilt I felt about inconveniencing her and missing the gathering which seemed so unprofessional to me. You’ll be where you need to be. She was with me in my suffering and she took action to help. Letting me let myself off the hook.
In our story this morning the parents couldn’t do anything significant or grand to eliminate the sources of their daughter’s fear and anxiety–the frightening realities she learned about from the news–but they were with her in her suffering and they took immediate, small but not insignificant actions to help her. “Come with me,” they each said in their turn. And walked hand in hand, through streets and into subways that we’re told are dangerous places. Walked hand in hand to grocery stores and bakeries owned and staffed by people whose cultures we’re told to fear and distrust. Teaching her step by step to be brave and trusting. Teaching her to say, “come with me.” And trusting her to be brave without them by her side.
When this book came up in my catalogue search for picture books about compassion I was doubtful. I mean, I like it because it’s not a didactic examination of compassion wrapped in a thin veneer of story. But is it about compassion? Shouldn’t it be more touchy-feely?
Then I saw Buddhist nun Gen Kelsang Demo interviewed on the Modern Buddhism podcast. From her I learned that looking at suffering leads to depression or the experience of being overwhelmed only if we stop there. But if we move on to the next stop of taking action to alleviate the suffering, if we focus on solutions, we free ourselves as well as the suffering one. One of her examples was surprising and powerful. She told a story about the mother of a young adult who had been paralyzed from the neck down. She remarked on the intense level of 24 hour care people who are quadriplegic require. And she said that out of compassion for her son that mother took immaculate care–of herself.
She ate regular, nutritious meals. Stayed hydrated. Exercised. Spent time with friends in enjoyable pursuits. Got enough sleep. Laughed frequently. She was with her son in his suffering, and despite what was probably her deepest desire, she could do nothing to restore his body. Instead, the best, most meaningful way she had to alleviate his suffering was to stay strong and healthy in order to tend to his physical needs, and vibrant and grounded in order to companion him to the end of his days, tending to his emotional and social and spiritual needs.
So too with the parents in the picture book. Maybe off stage, so to speak, they were organizing and rallying and calling elected officials and donating money to do their part in stopping or undoing the things that were frightening their daughter when she heard about them on the news. And maybe, along with the organizing, rallying, calling and donating of lots of other people, eventually, the news would be less frightening. But their daughter was suffering now. And they were with her in her suffering, so they took her by the hand, saying, “come with me,” and walked into their fears together. And so their suffering–all of their suffering–abated just a tiny bit.
None of this is to say we can’t or shouldn’t do the big public things. The organizing, rallying, phone banking and letter writing, protecting our migrant neighbors, and all the rest. That kind of action, in response to the suffering we see almost everywhere, the systems and conditions and actions that spark our fear, outrage, and moral indignation, that kind of action will also help us stave off depression and despair. And someday, eventually, all of us together taking all those actions and so many, many more, will stop the harm and turn the tide toward repairing our communities and rebuilding our democracy, and reinventing our systems.
In the meantime, perhaps come with me is the invitation compassion extends when it says, “I am with you in your pain and I will help.” Come with me. Together we will help one another. Because when your pain is relieved through whatever small gift I can offer, my pain is relieved by your allowing me to offer the gift. Come with me into the pain and together we’ll emerge from it, hand in hand, step by step, into a world transformed by our compassion. May it be so. Amen.
