Daily Compass

“Lift the veil of indifference, learn to understand one another’s plight, and share in the beauty, wonder, joy and awe of life. Love mercy and kindness, and walk humbly with one another, and with all creation. Love your neighbors as you love yourself. Give to others the full measure of your goodness, so they will give unto you the same. As you honor the covenant of your traditions, may you also covenant with all people of good will: a covenant of love, compassion, humility, generosity, gratitude and celebration.” -From “Ibrahim’s Prayer,” by Jan Taddeo

How can you lift the veil of indifference to others today?

“We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.” -The Charter for Compassion

How has compassion changed your relationships?

Compassion comes from roots that mean “to suffer with.” How do we develop a capacity to recognize another person’s pain and have it change the way we act and react?

What are ways you practice compassion?

Over the course of July, Daily Compass will loosely use Karen Armstrong’s framework in her book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life and the Charter for Compassion, to explore compassion.

 

Integrity can also mean a sense of being whole. Pressures in our world often pull us in different directions, fragmenting our sense of self. We often find ourselves broken and needing to put the pieces back together.

What are your strategies for spiritual wholeness?

 

“Come, every person of every race, ethnicity, creed, sexuality, gender identity and expression, sex, political belief, class, age, and ability. Let us come together, learn from one another. Let us build Beloved Community together, not because we’re all the same. Our differences matter, but not so much that we can’t find community with one another. We need places to find the Sacred and the Holy, to be transformed in the light of a faith that demands inquiry more than conformity, and to transform those who would see the sacredness of human identity as a sin rather than a blessing.” -from “A Place at the Table,” by Rev. Chris Rothbauer

Affirm someone’s sacredness today.