09_18_2018

Acknowledging a Journey of Compassionate Connections

Recently I attended a memorial service for a former colleague I worked with for about 8 years. She was an exceptional human being and a highly skilled social worker who provided counseling services to students on the college campus where we both worked.  As a person, she exuded compassion, enthusiasm, kindness and support to all she interacted with.  A number of the speakers at her memorial service offered a similar description of her: She made everyone she interacted with feel special. 

She and I often interacted from our different roles and positions at the college as we collaborated and brought our heads and hearts together in an effort to design appropriately creative solutions for students who stood to benefit from an extra hand of support.

Well into her career, and yet still at an early age, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Her initial diagnosis was favorable as the disease was discovered at a very early stage.  Her initial surgery and treatment regime showed promising results and it looked like the cancer had gone into remission.   I and others were optimistic about her survival rate.

I saw her briefly at a restaurant recently where we were both meeting our own groups of friends for dinner.  She was as lively and engaged as ever, and she looked healthy and fully recovered.  However, within a short six-month period, cancer reappeared in her body, and even with aggressive treatments, the cancer won out.

Her memorial service, with testimonials from her children, her siblings, her co-workers, and her friends as well as from members of her parish wove a beautiful tapestry of her life.  The vibrancy of how she lived and engaged with life yielded a radiant, colorful montage filled with her values, her accomplishments, her unwavering enthusiasm and energy.  It was also clear that she devoted time in her life to nurturing her inner soul, and how much joy she realized from spending time in nature and with her family and friends.   She was a living example of the adage: If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of others.

The closing of her memorial service ended with a version of the Lord’s Prayer.  I’m not a particularly religious person, but I am moved by thoughtful reminders that we all have the power to make choices in how we live our lives.

Like a laser force, words and thoughts speak to me in powerful ways when my heart and soul need the most attention.  Moving memorial services in which the audience has the opportunity to appreciate the life of another person always have a way of getting through my defenses or shields, and as a result, my heart and soul are more open or ready to reflect and heal.   On this occasion, it was the words from the Lords’ Prayer – forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us – that helped open my heart to forgiving someone I felt had recently betrayed my trust and friendship.

My way back to a compassionate and forgiving heart after being in the clutches of anger over a perceived hurt felt like I had been blessed by a magic want that helped release my soul from an unrelenting grip of anger that I was having difficulty shedding on my own.

Later that same day, I was preparing the materials for the next session of the Small Group Ministry that I facilitate within my Parish.  In preparing the materials, I came across a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson that I found incredibly moving:

THE HEART KNOWTH

We have a great deal more kindness

than is ever spoken.

The whole human family is

bathed with an element of love

like a fine ether.

How many persons we meet in

houses, whom we scarcely speak to,

whom yet we honor and who honor us!

How many we see in the street,

or sit with in church, whom

though silently we warmly

rejoice with them!

Read the language of these wandering eye beams.

The heart knowth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The poem entered my awareness at a time when my heart was aware and ready to receive the tender and compassionate message of connections that we all share with others in this life.   Having just spent two hours in a neighboring church with many others – most of whom I didn’t know – at my colleagues memorial service, I was well aware that I had felt a connection with them as we all had the shared experience of having a connection to the remarkable individual whose life we were celebrating.

Emerson’s poem gave me the incentive to pause and think about other situations in which I am surrounded by others, but without knowing them personally.  I do pay attention to people around me, and sometimes I notice kind things that they do and I am aware that such actions bring out my warm feelings for them.

To close the connections of this journey, while I was sitting in the waiting area at the gate from which my flight was departing for a business trip the day after the memorial service, I was doing my morning medication.  Using earplugs and listening to soothing music helps keep my attention focused.  I actually use external sounds to keep my attention focused, so while the idea of meditating In a crowded airport might seem like a strange undertaking, I find that I can actually enter a quiet space.  As I sat with my eyes closed and listened to all of the people around me in conversation, I was aware of all of the connections and engaged conversations that were underway.  I thought again of Emerson’s poem, and realized that I was warmly rejoicing with the humanity surrounding me.  My takeaway from the morning meditation came from the closing words of the medication experience: We are each responsible for the intentions that we create to guide  our lives; we are the artists creating the image of our own lives.

                Each of us is an artist responsible for creating a life of beauty.  My prayer is that I may be as successful as my former colleague in creating a tapestry of my life that has a strong theme of compassion and heartfelt connections with others.

It’s amazing isn’t it, that once our hearts open to learning and loving, the path forwarded is filled with opportunities to grow and that remind us that we are on the right journey.  Even better, such a path is filled with joyful markers that encourage us to continue the work.

Namaste