Compassion

In these days listening to the rhetoric regarding health care one cannot help but wonder whatever happened to compassion?

When we look to the words of Jesus we are told to "Love one another.  As I have love you, so you must love one another." (John 13:34)When we look to the Declaration of Independence of the United States, our forefathers were compassionate:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all ... are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Doesn't my neighbor have as much right and access to health care as I do?  I know the daily cost of my medication (and I have insurance to pay it).  I can guess the cost of a woman in her 80s who a year following bypass surgery must pay for her own medication now.  We both have worked our adult lives and have had he benefit of health care.  If I am stuck I can call family and draw from three generations of growing resources over time.   I live secure in a "structure of wealth".  I have never had to worry about getting health care.  As the sunsets I can jump in my car and drive up to the beach and enjoy the colors.  

Yet less than five miles away others live in the maze of poverty.  Its not as simple as "get a job".  There are those who work long hard hours, yet barely make ends meet, that live simply because that is all they can live.  They do not have the depth of resources to have a new heater installed or assure their children can go to college.  The thought of getting in a car to drive to the beach at sunset is not even an option ... the cost of gas at $2.75/gallon is too much.  Choices between food, heat, medication, books. are made daily ... and not simply.

We are called to love, to serve, to have compassion.  This puts us in connection with one another.  Those with whom we live, we work, we pray, and we laugh.  We are connected to those we don't know.  The faces we have yet to see.  The hands we have yet to touch.  The beggar at the corner, the mother on the bus, the man who walks the streets at night collecting cans.  

We are not alone ... and we can let our neighbors be alone in their struggle.  Their struggle becomes our struggle ... and we cannot let them suffer alone.  Love one another.  All are created equal.  Together let's change the systems we live in ... 

Compassion does not feel sorry in the face of suffering; 

it knows that all suffering is its own. 

When we recognize this connection between us and everyone else, 

we know that we belong to each other; 

we do not suffer alone.  

Hannah's Gift p 195