This is Compassion

I used to believe I’d been cursed. Cursed to weep for the people I’ve never met and stories I know very little. I used to think that this could be nothing short of a curse. I have realized I couldn’t have been further from the truth. 

This is compassion. 


It’s weeping when you hear that people have only heard the sad gospel. They don’t know any better, they’re just broken people looking for their missing pieces. They don’t know, they’re just lost. 


This is love. 


The kind that looks kinda strange. It’s seeing the pain of others and screaming at the injustice. It’s having no choice other than to take it up with heaven. It’s not just crying its weeping because crying just doesn’t seem cut it.


It feels unfair and completely irrational to cry for those you’ve never met and never will. It feels out of place to be so completely caught up that you can’t help but pray. It’s not hard to feel as though you have lost all sense of reason when you find yourself crying on a Thursday afternoon simply because you listened to some poetry. 


I heard a quote once from Billy Collins, “Poetry is the history of the human heart.” If that is true then there is nothing more reasonable than to weep when ingesting poetry. For the history of the human heart is so very full of every emotion there has been and ever will be. 


Compassion is love in acton or love in expression. It’s unsettling and even disturbing to those unfamiliar with true compassion. 


The very world it’s self groans and weeps for the restoration of the human race. (Romans 8:22) If that’s not compassion I don’t know what is. If the trees cry for you and I how come crying for someone you’ve never met seems unhinged or weak? 


The very act of weeping is compassion. “For what cannot be said will be wept.” I can’t count the times I’ve wept because there was no better form of communication. 


I guess what I’m trying to say is that crying, weeping, for people is not weak it is love and the purest from of it. Compassion is not a weakness it is a strength and one that should be celebrated.  What I’m saying is compassion is not a curse, it is a gift. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

september 1st

September 1st, its the beginning of things. It’s the beginning of the end of the year. At least in my head September has always felt like the beginning of the end. I’m happy to know that the sweltering heat is nearly past and its almost sweater time. I like the fall, mostly because it feels like the rest before the rest, it feels like the closest to what my heart looks like, but partly I like the fall because I like the word falling.   This week I did what I could, which doesn’t look like much but I ate well and washed my face often and I tried.  I got back into the studio yesterday and was immediately overwhelmed. To start with my work space was a mess, as it has been for months, and finally yesterday was the day I couldn’t take it anymore and tidied up the table that serves as my workstation. It was probably 20 minutes of finding homes for things and trying to remember how I had had it organized in the first place. But it was 20 minutes well spent, because at end not eve...
Read more

Learning

Over the years I’ve learned many things about myself and how I function. For example: if I need to force myself to wash my face I put on make up, because I figured out that the need to not sleep in my make up supersedes my laziness. I’ve discover lots of what I call hacks in my own functioning. As I’ve written about before I grew up struggling with depression, so one of my biggest challenges, even when I don’t feel depressed, is to get motivated. So I’ve found some of my own personal quirks that I can almost trick myself into doing the healthy things instead of relying completely on motivation. This is also true when it comes to my art.   I’ve learned that I can’t sit in my studio for hours on end, the most productive and best work is done in the first and second hour. Anything more and I start to get too into my head. I also need to have somewhat of a plan before I even walk down the stairs. Otherwise I get overwhelmed just looking at all that I could do, or I start random proje...
Read more

Almost There

Nowadays it is the norm to go to collage or university even when you don’t know what you want to do. It’s preached go to school and figure it out while you’re there. It’s taught that your job is your life and it is all you really ought to try to achieve. Even as young as 14 this didn't sit right with me, I always dodged the questions. What do you want to be, what school do you want to go to, what would you like to do with your life. Because I learned from a young age that artist wasn’t the answer that they were looking for.   I learned to fly under the radar because I knew my dream would be easily crushed, but I am stubborn. So I did my best in school and then I made my great escape. Now almost five years later I am about 3 steps away from achieving what I set out to do.  I have about three things felt to do and then I will not just be an artist who makes things frequently, I will be one who sells these things too. I have an 8 painting series ready to be sold, and that is...
Read more