more toughts from A Hidden Wholeness

I've been doing a lot of thinking these days about compassion and how we are to dwell with one another in order to bear each others' burdens. A great deal of these thoughts have come from my own experience and my own need to simply be heard and not be fixed. More than ever, it has been impressed upon me the need simply to be seen and heard by those around me and it has caused me to begin to think more about those around me-- how can I best serve them in love and compassion without acting like I have the strength (that I don't actually have) to give them the answer. Palmer has some great thoughts on this truth. Take a listen:

"... The deeper your issue goes, the less likely it is that my advice will be of any real value. I may know how to fix your car or help you write a paper, but I do not know how to salvage your failed marriage, or save you from despair. My answer to your deepest difficulties merely reflects what I would do if I were you, which I am not. And even if I were your psychospiritual clone, my solution would be of little use to you unless it arose from within your soul and you claimed it as your own.
In the face of your deepest questions... our habit of advising each other reveals its shadow side. If the shadow could speak its logic, I think it would say something like this: "If you take my advice, it will surely solve your problem. If you take my advice but fail to solve your problem, you did not try hard enough. If you fail to take my advice, I did the best I could. So I am covered. Not matter how things come out, I no longer need to worry about you or your vexing problem."
The shadow behind the "fixes" we offer for issues hat we cannot fix, ironically, the desire to hold each other at bay. It is a strategy for abandoning each other while appearing to be concerned. Perhaps this explains why one of the most common laments of your time is that "no one really sees me, hears me, or understands me." How can we understand another when instead of listening deeply, we rush to repair that person in order to escape further involvement? The sense of isolation and invisibility that marks so many lives-- not least the lives of young people, whom we constantly try to fix-- is due in part to a mode of "helping" that allows us to dismiss each other.
When you speak to me about your deepest questions, you do not want to be fixed or saved: you want to be seen and heard, to have your truth acknowledged and honored. If your problem is soul-deep, your soul alone knows what you need to do about it, and my presumtuous advice will only drive your soul back into the woods. So the best service I can render when you speak to me about such a struggle is to hold you faihfully in a space where you can lisen to your inner teacher."

I think it is so tempting to want to fix each other for so many of the reasons that Palmer so articulately stated in the quote above. In the past week or so I've been thinking about why God allows us to go through pain and struggle, why he doesn't just take it away and make life easy. And continuing on this journey of learning that hardship becomes beautiful when it drives us in to the arms of the Father, it makes sense too that in our own relationships with one another that the impluse to fix is actually a desire to disengage. If you don't have problems, then my heart can stop breaking with yours-- I can get back to work. We have a series of quotes on our refrigerator from the Valentine edition of a magazine and the one that always brings me the most hope says, "Love means I choose to make your problem my concern." Suddenly, I realize that true love carries the burden, even if that weight is borne by the silence of listening rather than the noise of advice. I love how he says, even if my advice is the very best, it means nothing if it does not connect with your own soul.

So I am hoping to grow into a friend and listener able to give up my own pride to really hear and see you. That I would be someone of compassion that separates my own desires, my own ego, for the true love I have for you. And to be honest, to let go of the need to fix frees me to do the only thing I really have the strength to do-- hear you.

Compassion. I sense that it is growing in me little by little, piece by piece these days and it is a very warm, comforting feeling.