Thank you.
How could two such innocuous, commonplace, ordinary words confront me so much? And yet, that is where I found myself yesterday. Why are you thanking me? I didn't. come.. for... you...
Or did I?
Yesterday I joined my first protest march. It was in support of refugees and asylum seekers. Listening to speeches and the stories personally shared by three asylum seekers, I found myself being stirred to a deeper level, both with compassion as well as a growing sense of outrage at the inhuman way these people are being treated. As impacting and confronting as this was, it was another incident that caught me by surprise and hit me at a totally new and different level.
As we walked through the city, I saw some friends who are asylum seekers. We exchanged greetings and happiness at seeing each other there, and their immediate and automatic response to me was "Thank you so much for coming", in the sense that I had come to support them personally. And that was when the real confrontation hit me. My instinctive feeling was wondering why they were thanking me, my coming was separate to them, it wasn't about them...ouch!
As I reflected on why I was feeling all this, I realised how selfish some of my actions are. Going to the rally was about me, about my frustration and inability to affect change, and a desire to have an outlet for that. Now, don't get me wrong. I am happy to support asylum seekers in whatever way I can, but there is also a level of being comfortable in that. As long as I can keep it at arms length, that I can go home afterwards and put it back in the "manageable" place I am happy to help.
My friends' thanks at such a personal level changed that. This is about real people who are not me. In turn, this confronts me about my own lack of real compassion. Will I allow myself to feel and share the very real pain of my friends, and that so many others are going through and what does that look like? It is one thing to try to fix the situation others are in, to try to support and care for them, but am I prepared to sit in and with their pain? Will I let it touch me to the point where I start to hurt as they hurt? Am I prepared to identify with them?
Two stories of Jesus weeping come to mind. The first is when He arrived at Bethany (John 11), and saw all the people mourning the loss of their brother and friend, Lazarus. Jesus was so moved with compassion for their grief that He also wept. The second is when He is approaching Jerusalem for the final time before His death, and He looks over that city and weeps for it as the seat of Jewish faith, representing His people (Luke 19:41). Jesus saw the reality of people's pain and loss at both a personal level as well as a societal level, and He allowed that grief to touch Him to the point of action that made a difference. For Lazarus and his friends and family, it meant another opportunity at life. And I guess within His own death, it means another opportunity at life for all of us.
I am aware of a tendency in myself to separate my emotions from others by rationalisation, not in a blaming or uncaring way, but one that says "that is their journey, their road to walk". It is a way of coping, of not having compassion overload, but I wonder whether it also leads to a lack of action? This is one of the things that surprised me at the rally, also. The lack of passion. I was expecting chants and rally calls, but most people simply strolled down the road chatting. A number had their banners and placards, but even then probably half of those were advertising proclaiming who they were. Where was the passion? Where was the outrage? And at what point will we take our argument to the next level, where we actually start to force some change? Or don't we care that much?
Walter Brueggemann's observations in The Prophetic Imagination seem very pertinent to this. He talks of the problems of affluence and satiation. What it basically boils down to is that when a society is well fed and has their material needs met, there is a lack of ability to even recognise coming doom, much less to raise passion to help someone else living that doom. As long as my needs are met today and tomorrow, what do I really care? Apathy sets in, and this is pretty obvious in our society. Standing up for injustice in our communities and elsewhere is simply not a priority.
For me, I am confronted with why I have not bothered to spend half an hour writing a letter to my local MP. I am wondering what else I can do to make myself more of a pest, to show our government that this issue is not going to lay down and die, we are not going to give up. But most of all, I want to spend some more time reflecting on how I can allow myself to connect with other people's pain, to make my compassion personal.
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