Compassion as a sacred source for spiritual leadership

The times we live in require fortitude. We are inundated with a superabundance of information and targeted algorithmic campaigns like never before. And even as our scientific and technological advancements have created comforts that past generations would have laughed at (autonomous cars, really?!) — we are in some ways more deeply aware of our precarity. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing ecological devastation reveal to us just how susceptible and vulnerable life is.

It turns out that our crises also reveal something to us about the preciousness of our fleeting life.

While some voices want to address these changes through promoting a vision of supremacy, hyper-individualism and isolationism, the Christian Scriptures reveal that it is precisely through our vulnerability where divinity begins to shine. The writer of 2 Corinthians affirms this in chapter 12, verse 9 (NSRVue): “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” It is vital we resist the dehumanization of our times, which uplifts perfection and where power over others is too often normalized.

As faith-based leaders, we must ask ourselves two critical questions: What practices support us to wisely engage our human condition? What prevents us from moving into inherited cycles of denial, minimization or the addiction to control or certainty?

The great mystic and contemplative Julian of Norwich has wisdom for us — the antidote to dehumanization is compassion. She wrote, “I saw that God can give us everything we need and that there are three things we need most: love, longing, and compassion. When we receive loving compassion in our times of need, we are protected.”

Compassion is a practice

We may hear a lot about compassion, but we know far too little about how it works. Contemporary neuroscience tells us that compassion is innate and also can be cultivated. However, it does not happen without conscious development.

Compassion exists when we are present and undistracted. In ministry leadership contexts, we are often distracted by important things — leading organizational meetings, visioning social change projects, writing sermons, research or teaching. While all are essential, how present are we while performing those tasks? Do we have any moments in our day where we can just be present for presence’s sake?

When we begin to give our lives to presence, we also take our own interior movements seriously. Whether we are feeling happy, surprised, angered or disappointed, presence invites all those forward so that we can show up more honestly to the world. When we practice compassionate presence, not only will we begin to notice and act in ways we could not have predetermined, but we will also begin to embody presence amid all we navigate throughout any one day.

Compassion requires our consent and is a power that we participate in because it is alive in all other beings. This can be easy to forget. If we become overwhelmed by the immensity and intensity of challenges, we can feel like giving up. Here is where patience is key. Patience is a deep trust that if we continue taking the next faithful step in a mystery of healing that wells up, often when least expected, things will come together. As Julian of Norwich said in a time of great difficulty: “All shall be well”! Julian’s assertion did not mean that suffering does not matter or that we should not complain. Rather, she was recognizing that in every loss there is an opportunity for something else to rise.

Compassionate patience is a willingness to give one’s life to the change one longs for, even if we may not see it in this lifetime. Compassion becomes clear when it is done without needing any particular outcome to validate itself, when it is offered with an overarching trust that no loving action is ever wasted. As an act of faith, it is always eternal.

The basis of social transformation

The beginning of a compassionate life for the world is first to be known through receiving compassion. When Jesus sent out the disciples he said, “Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment” (Matthew 10:8).

Here, Jesus is reminding us that healing work flows to the extent we have received compassion personally. Compassion is a way of being in deep connection with God and all life. In fact, compassion is the foundation for all life-affirming action.

In the classes I teach on contemplative leadership, one of the most important exercises we do is to have students visualize moments of compassion. It could be as simple as enjoying face-warming rays of sun, singing a freedom or worship song, or being a recipient of care in a moment of distress.

Compassion is contagious. Once we receive it, compassion begins to flow out of us in ways we never imagined. Our problems come when we forget to return to the wellspring of compassion available in the mundane, ordinary and surprising moments of our day. Reflecting on moments when we have received compassion, we realize that it is not a “thing we do” but a relational act we participate in as we flow with the sacred rhythms pulsing through all of life.

It can be easier to enact compassion with others than with our own selves, but the more we extend compassion to our inner worlds, the more capacity we build to extend compassion to the world, and the less we will experience burnout or savior complex.

Compassionate leadership requires trust in who we are at our core and involves perseverance along with presence and patience. A living compassion requires that we stick with things rather than turning away. Compassion is not looking for quick, easy, solutions where all the problems are “fixed.” It involves a persevering spirit and persistence in showing up — being unmoved by the powers that be and the paralyzing fears that come from an impulse for self-preservation.

As leaders in this time, we can only heal what we are willing to face inside. In the words of James Baldwin: “One can only face in others what one can face in oneself. On this confrontation depends the measure of our wisdom and compassion. This energy is all that one finds in the rubble of vanished civilizations, and the only hope for ours.”

Baldwin helps us to see that compassion is the wisdom that flows when we choose not to separate our lives from the human condition but are willing to meet and welcome the life of the world on the inside and to engage the outside from that place. Whether we face joy or sorrows, compassion calls us to be intimately connected.

The change we long for will only flow through the cultivation of compassion. May we begin to do this, little by little, and act with courage to promote the flourishing of the whole, abiding in the truth that all of life is interwoven.