Quotes about Compassion

What good people can do in the face of great sorrow. We help some time pass for those suffering. We sit with them in their hopeless pain and feel terrible with them, without trying to fix them with platitudes; doing this with them is just about the most gracious gift we have to offer. We give up what we think we should be doing, or think we need to get done, to keep them company.

I would rarely be in conformity with the Divine's huge, crazy love so I just prayed, Help me start walking in your general direction, and the greatest prayer, Help me not be such an asshole.

The point was to lean toward goodness, to resist less, to pray for our enemies. The point was to have a spiritual awakening of any sort that would help us live more often in kind awareness.

Forgiveness and mercy mean that, bit by bit, you begin to outshine the resentment.

Take care of yourselves; take care of one another.

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.

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.

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.