Quotes About Compassion

Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

If you want to change the way you feel about people, you have to change the way you treat them.

Children should not have treacherous diseases or be afraid. This should be one rule we all agree on.

Help for the sick and hungry, home for the homeless folk, peace in the world forever, this is my prayer, O Lord. Amen.

Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since the parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit how horrible their children are. ... you can either practice being right or practice being kind. Screaming in the car helped. [p. 94]

When we agree to (or get tricked into) being part of something bigger than our own wired, fixated minds, we are saved. When we search for something larger than our own selves to hook into, we can come through whatever life throws at us.

We have all we need to come through. Against all odds, no matter what we've lost, no matter what messes we've made over time, no matter how dark the night, we offer and are offered kindness, soul, light, and food, which create breath and spaciousness, which create hope, sufficient unto the day.

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and save the world. You sent money to the Red Cross, you registered people to vote, you marched in rallies, stood in vigils, picked up litter.

To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass—seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.

Mercy means that we no longer constantly judge everybody's large and tiny failures, foolish hearts, dubious convictions, and inevitable bad behavior. We will never do this perfectly, but how do we do it better?

Mercy is radical kindness. Mercy means offering or being offered aid in desperate straits. Mercy is not deserved. It involves absolving the unabsolvable, forgiving the unforgivable. Mercy brings us to the miracle of apology, given and accepted, to unashamed humility when we have erred or forgotten.

I prayed for my heart to soften, to forgive her, and love her for what she did give me--life, great values, a lot of tennis lessons, and the best she could do. Unfortunately, the best she could do was terrible, thee the Minister of Silly Walks trying to raise an extremely sensitive young girl, and my heart remained hardened toward her. [p. 46]

Then it came to me: I was asking the wrong question. The right one is: Where is God in gang warfare? And the answer is, The same place God is in Darfur, and in our alcoholism, and when children are bullied: being crucified.

And I guess when you take away the resentment and disappointment, it's that simple. It is what we do in families: we help, because we were helped.

They taught us that extending ourselves to others would help us stay sober and sane. But they also wanted us to extend ourselves to our own horrible selves, get ourselves a lovely cup of tea. It was and is the hardest work ever.

You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing that you are worth profound care, even when you're dirty and rattled. Who knew?

ultimately we're all just walking each other home.

If you want to feel loving, I coached myself, do something loving. This is basic soul care.

And my father, who never once in his life would have used the word 'nigger,' would smile and give an almost imperceptible laugh -- not a trace of rage on behalf of black people, not a trace of rage on behalf of me.

this is the work of the Holy Spirit and our operating instructions, to be cooling breezes to sad or worried people, including ourselves, in this sometimes hot stuffy joint [the world].

He had the time to hear, like a person who believed there was someone alive beneath the rubble of herself, who heard the soft sounds she could still make from the broken parts that had waited decades to be missed.

They say we are punished not for the sin but by the sin, and I began to feel punished by my unwillingness to forgive.

The lesson here is that there is no fix. There is, however, forgiveness. To forgive yourselves and others constantly is necessary. Not only is everyone screwed up, but everyone screws up.

You celebrate what works and you take tender care of what doesn't, with lotion, polish, and kindness.