Crossing All The Borders (part 2)
Sometimes, I magnify my own discomfort in my mind so I can approach another’s suffering.
I turn traffic jams into pesky flies and festering sores. I turn a critical remark into an onslaught from a nearby tribe. I turn a bothersome heat into a crop -parching drought, a rainy day into a monsoon. I turn the longing for personal space into a lifetime of sharing one room with ten people.
In truth, I can’t come close to these experiences when I imagine them, no matter what amount of time I take to try to do that, no matter how strong my intent to dive deeply.
But the effort inspires in me an ever-growing gratitude for my own life, as well as a more finely-tuned understanding of those whose lives I encounter every day. I care about those lives — and about lives I do not know — as if no boundaries existed between us.
The dog waits in a locked car during a summer heat wave. The windows of the car are cracked only slightly for ventilation. The car is not parked in the shade. No water has been left for the dog, and he is panting.
A man who doesn’t have use of his legs drives his specially-equipped van to go shopping for groceries during a snowstorm. What was it like for him getting ready? Did he find his hat easily, and his keys and glasses? Did he remember his shopping list? What if the list slipped beneath the table? Imagine the search. Imagine the retrieval.
Becoming Each Other
I remember the night decades ago I was lonesome for my daughter, Jenny. She had just left the week-long retreat we’d shared in my cabin in Maine, to make her home in Colorado. I had no idea when I’d see Jenny again — or my son, Joel, who lived near where Jenny would be living.
I wept, missing them, until somehow my mind turned. I found myself thinking of other mothers separated from their children.
Mothers sending their children off in little boats or over mountains, with individuals they didn’t know, to save them from dangers intensifying in their homelands — sending them away knowing full well they likely would never see their children again, or learn what had become of them.
I imagined the goodbyes — became the mothers, best I could, feeling humble in the presence of such high company.
I became my own mother valiantly withstanding illness and loneliness after my father died.
I’ve become children in foreign countries (and in my own country) warehoused in camps and orphanages.
I’ve become pets abandoned, or taken to the pound, because they are of no use or pleasure any longer to the families who have been with them for their lifetimes.
I’ve become boulders (thousands of years old) upended from their resting places.
My “grandmother” is an old person I have never met who lives in China or Spain or Russia. My "son" is a man making his home in the Australian outback or in a castle in France. My “granddaughter" is a little girl living on the plains of Africa or Egypt.
My “brother” is the pine outside my door. My “sisters” are the whales in the ocean and the osprey circling above the field beyond my cabin.
Frontiers Of Compassion
Think of the worst situation — emotional or spiritual or physical — you have experienced, Now imagine someone whose life, like yours, is not free from situations. At work might sit a person whose daughter or pet or parent is ill, or has just died.
This person might be ill, himself, and not know it yet — or perhaps he’s just been told some bad news. The neighbor you drive past each day on your way to the market or to the gas station might be out of food and fuel.
Multiplying the situations by the number of people on earth, we begin to grasp the extent of need. Being compassionate with whomever we encounter, we ease that need.
Frontiers of compassion are expanding — beyond our home, beyond our workplace, beyond our neighborhood. Anywhere we happen to be is the perfect site for our “ministry.”
Warmed By The Same Sun
Born on the same earth, warmed by the same son, we breathe the breath of plants and trees and of each other. The dust of our bones becomes the soil that feeds our gardens. What we put on our crops to protect them, the wind brings cross country to someone else’s field.
We are not isolated even if we want to be.
If I were an artist I would paint an outline of myself and put inside it the richness of life all around me. I would paint mountains and waterfalls, and fossils, and sky and animals, and rocks and plants. I would paint clouds of joy and oceans of suffering. I would add planets whirling around suns.
My eyes would be stars. My hair would be seaweed. My skin would be of roses end of lilies.
If I painted long enough, the outline I made of myself would be gone. I’d be no less than the world all around.
This post was inspired by a section from my book, Caring In Remembered Ways: The Fruit of Seeing Deeply.
Both Caring In Remembered Ways and my website celebrate compassion and the oneness of all life.
Medium posts, the same. I hope you find them worthwhile. Here are a few:
Crossing All The Borders (Part 1)
Not Being Listened To Is A Loud Noise.
Thank you for clapping/sharing/responding/following when you’re moved to. Means much.
