Quotes about Compassion

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.

For thirty years, she has answered all of my distressed or deeply annoyed phone calls by saying, "Hello, Dearest. I'm so glad it's you!" I've come to believe that this is how God feels when I pray, even at my least attractive.

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.

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].

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

When you're kind to people, and you pay attention, you make a field of comfort around them, and you get it back—the Golden Rule meets the Law of Karma meets Murphy's Law.

Anything that leaves you more fearful, more isolated, more disconnected from other people, more full of judgment or self-hatred, is not of God, does not follow the Rule of Love—and you should stop doing it.

To heal, it seems we have to stand in the middle of the horror, at the foot of the cross, and wait out another's suffering where that person can see us.

Haters want us to hate them because hate is incapacitating. When we hate we can't operate from our real selves, which is our strength.

When we try to see a damaged person as one of God's regular old customers, instead of a lost cause, it takes the pressure off everybody. We can then loosen our death grip on the person, which usually results in progress for everyone, also known in certain circles as grace.

She quoted the Reverend James Forbes as saying, "Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.