Thursday, June 01, 2006

compassion fatigue

wandering down Granville Street on the way home from work and there are more poor people than ever with the truly desperate look in their eyes---I know from my work the effects of this government's policies of no longer including eyecare in health care so people can't even see to get a job, of not giving any bus passes so people don't have transportation to get a job or education or find housing etc. This is a government, supported by the majority of B.C.ers apparently, who as far as I can tell, think that helping people is for the weak; it's throwing good money away, wasting it on the undeserving. Who are the real losers?
As I know well from my work there are compassionate and helpful, hardworking people among the poor and desperate and there are people who have nothing going on but their own self-interest and that's usually misguided (just like this government's policies are---creating far more problems by not dealing with them).
How can I survive in such a world without being consumed by frustrated rage at the selfishness, or having my heart torn out at the needless suffering?
And aren't these questions as common as the dust?
and lead inevitably to the question---does g-d exist, and if g-d exists, how can such suffering exist? But imagine g-d is a verb, not a thing, but "a great illimitable happening" ;therefore, compassion is always being, must be being created anew as part of the nature of g-d
/godding/godessingg/godsing. And any lack of compassion on our part is simply dis-ease in the body of g-des.
If we help each other to move out of suffering then we are creating the milk of human kindness which is a part of the compassion of All that Is. We can't solve the need to create compassion, we might not even be able to eliminate poverty, we can only respond to the need in the best way that we can...