"Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future." Nelson Mandela.
Heart - Love - Compassion. These three seem comfy together, don't they? How about this foursome: God - Love - Christ - Compassion? Find any congruence there? Any warmth? A oneness, say?
We often use fill-ins for compassion (perhaps reflective of our circumstance and community): empathy, brotherly love, kindness, sensitivity, care, consideration, understanding, tenderness, sympathy, tolerance.
Which word are you more drawn to today?
Heart.
That's my today's word. Heart. I'll say why. Two peculiar reasons.
1. In an arena where power, raw power, absolute power, is the prize, cruelty is the point; such a community is aggregated around consumption of anguish (i.e., the raw pain of those it deems do not belong, those who must not be welcomed). In such a community, incoming cries for compassion, pleas for empathy, calls for understanding, are nothing more than sweet garnish upon their feasts. (You'd do your cause doubly wrong to persist your plea there. You are scouting for a pulse. Much too soon - wearied by your search - you will face a particular dilemma: compassion fatigue. Soulical Burnout. That is a thing, you know. M-hm. A sad thing. A very sad thing. A blah!)
2. Now when it comes to ancient narratives, even moreso ancient wisdom-stories passed on to us, we have a tendency (we - the casual, the untrained, the novice, the eager acolyte) to project into those narratives our local understandings and familiar experiences. That is only natural. We know only that which we do know. In the face of this a fair question might be: would such unwitting projections be to our general good or to eventual downfall?
Heart, for example. Let's take a closer look at it.
Translation debates aside, heart occurs in the King James version of the Old Testament 725 times and in the King James version of the New Testament 105 times. Interestingly enough, in aggregate that occurance is more than two and half times more prevalent than the word love, more than two and a half times more prevalent than the word pray, more than three and a half times more prevalent that the word wisdom, and almost twice more prevalent than the word sin. Hmm? Should that tell us something? I don't know. But it caught my attention, especially also because the only two words of consequence recurring more prevalently than heart in the King James Bible are God and Lord!
Okay, probably much ado about nothing!
Then I remembered something - something quite specific about heart - acquired from my various learnings!
'Heart' seems to take on a life of its own in so many cherished stories from ancient times. This beating blob is the wellknown center of all parts of human existence. It has presumed unto itself all kinds of human intellectual, emotional and physical characteristics and desires. And desperately wicked too! Hmm? It is as anthropomorphic as it is poetic. Isn't that so?
How come?
Is this intentional or happenstance?
Aha! Here is what history reveals at a closer look.
Back - way-way back - in those story-filled days, our wise old storytellers and thought leaders and interpreters of divine existence were not as familiar with the human body (biologically) as we are of it today, that it is equipped with a brain (a remarkable blob of flesh in the human head, which we are getting to know ever more about as time progresses.) They just did not know. Isn't it amazing how much humanity learns and discerns over time, so much so, knowledge possessed by even a child today our cherished ancestors were not near privy to? And yet - o-wow - they were so wise. Isn't that amazing also? Yes, it is by that error and lack of knowledge that the heart became the center of everything, as such. What to us might seem marvelous metaphors and fine poetry, to them were mere realities of the human flesh. Isn't that something?
Check it out. Knowing can be awesome.
The heart - you see - despite the greatest revelations of our time is still central to life and living, to eternity and exisiting: that is the heart of the matter.
Compassion!
It is at the heart of who we are: kill it and we are dead.
If your heart does not beat for you, it cannot beat for someone else.
Compassion is a living resource. It is love. Our body and our shield.
Protective
"Isn't it amazing what a boy with a slingshot, a few pebbles, a good brain, and an unconquerable will can do? This is the question a missionary posed to our Sunday School class years later. That night, however, on that box, mommy's eyes and teeth flashed under the starlight and I felt her breath as this story bounced and swirled from her like an expertly tossed yoyo, and this time, David's triumph over Goliath informed me in a very different way." What did the people see?
[ ILICET - A Time To Begin Again ]
ILICET - A Time To Begin Again (True Story) 
