Quotes About Compassion

God loves you crazily, like I love you, Rae said, like a slightly overweight auntie, who sees only your marvelousness and need.

Jesus said that whatever you did to the least of his people, you did to him, and the lifers in penitentiaries are the leastest people in this country. Just look to see whose budgets are being cut these days -- the old, the crazies, the children in Head Start -- and that's where Jesus will be.

The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to. Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches.

Teaching] was hard. Some of the kids were needy and vulnerable and depressed, with faces of dubious, aged concern, rumpled foreheads, downcast or shuttered eyes. Some were wild. We did not exclude anyone, because Jesus didn't. On bad days, I could not imagine what he had been thinking. I could always feel Jesus in the room, encouraging us in every way, although maybe he would have stopped short of sharing Doritos with us.

What your giving can do is to help your readers be braver, be better than they are, be open to the world again.

It turns out that welcome is solidarity. We're glad you're here, and we're with you. This whole project called you being alive, you finding joy? Well, we're in on that.

P 264: Elizabeth talking to Rosie re Sharon leaving--Try to be a good sport, baby. Sharon feels as bad as you do. It's all right for you to be mad, but...try to be as good a sport as you can. I'll tell you. It's a run-of-the-mill shitty thing. Life is full of them. And it is ALWAYS feels better to be kind.

There is so much mercy around us and in us, so much available to us if we just have the eyes and intention to see it.

So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human?

Try to be a good sport, baby. Sharon feels as bad as you do. It's all right for you to be mad, but...try to be as good a sport as you can. I'll tell you. It's a run-of-the-mill shitty thing. Life is full of them. And it is ALWAYS feels better to be kind.

The good news is that God has such low standards, and reaches out to those of us who are often not lovable and offers us a chance to come back in from the storm of drama and toxic thoughts.

Who knows, maybe those two rogue leaders, Gandhi and Jesus, were right—a loving response changes the people who would beat the shit out of you, including yourself, of course. Their way, of the heart, makes everything bigger. Decency and goodness are subversively folded into the craziness, like caramel ribbons into ice cream. Otherwise, it's about me, and my bile ducts, and how unique I am and how I've suffered. And that is what hell is like.

Your job is to present clearly your viewpoint, your line of vision. Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense.

This is a hard planet, and we're a vulnerable species. And all I can do is pray: Help. When

Haters want us to hate them, because hate is incapacitating.

Polite inclusion is the gateway drug to mercy.

The last word will not be our bad thoughts and behavior, but mercy, love, and forgiveness.

Marianne Moore put it, "The world's an orphan's home.

The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe. JOANNA MACY

These days are among the hardest we will ever live through. The wind is blowing, but because we are together in this, we have hope. Most days. Maybe more than ever before in my lifetime, my friends and I are aware of our brokenness and the deep crazy, the desperation for light, hope, food, and medicine for poor. What helps is that we are not all crazy and hopeless on the same day. one of us remembers and reminds the rest of us that when it is really dark you can see the stars.

Booker T. Washington said, "I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him

The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?

I came into this world with mercy for nearly everyone, everywhere, and for all cats and dogs at the pound. A fat lot of good it did me. By five years old, I had migraines and the first signs of OCD. By about age six, along with innocence and wonder and truth, I put away childish things. They said to, the people in charge of keeping me alive. I did.

My parents, teachers, and the culture I grew up in showed me a drawer in which to stuff my merciful nature, because mercy made me look vulnerable and foolish, and it made me less productive. It was distracting to focus worried eyes on others instead of on homework, and on poor Dad, after all he had done for us, and on the prize of making the whole family look good.