the compassion anthology
  • About Us
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Staff
    • Exhibit Photos
  • Letter from the Editor
  • Poetry
    • Amirah Al Wassif
    • Zakia el-Marmouke
    • Rachelle Parker
    • Michelle Messina Reale
    • Todd Davis
    • Lori Levy
    • Tim Suermondt
    • Amy Small-McKinney
    • Chad W. Lutz
    • Brenda Yates
    • Carolyn Martin
  • Fiction
    • Leo Tolstoy
    • Leslie Contreras Schwartz
    • K. Alan Leitch
    • Laton Carter
    • Dave Barrett
  • Essays
    • Cathy Warner
    • Serenity Schoonover
    • Review of the Movie What Do You Believe Now?
  • Art
    • The Masters
    • Amantha Tsaros
    • Christopher Woods
    • Ann Marie Sekeres
  • Archives
    • Spring 2019, Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2018 Letter from the Editor
    • Summer 2017 Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2017 Letter from the Editor
    • Summer 2016 Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2016 Letter from the Editor
    • Summer 2015 Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2015 Letter from the Editor
    • Spring 2015 Letter from the Editor
    • Exhibits/Fundraisers 2015
    • Poetry, 2019 >
      • Robbie Gamble
      • Robert Okaji
      • Nicholas Samaras
      • Gabriella Brand
      • Sarah Wernsing
      • Jen Karetnick
      • Cindy Veach
      • Seres Jaime Magana
    • Fiction, 2019 >
      • Ruth Mukwana
      • Andrea Gregory
      • Olivia Kate Cerrone
      • Rebecca Keller
    • Essays, 2019 >
      • Review of the movie GIFT
      • Jalina Mhyana
      • Stephen Dau
      • Alexandra Grabbe
      • Olive Paige
    • Art, 2019 >
      • Krisztina Asztalos
      • Rute Ventura
      • Laura Gurton
    • Winter 2018 Art >
      • Dawid Planeta
      • Liliana Washburn
      • Ellen Halloran
    • Winter 2018 Fiction >
      • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
      • Herman Melville
    • Winter 2018 Essays >
      • Nikki Hodgson
      • Ciara Hall
      • Sara Roizen
      • Review of Claudine Nash's The Wild Essential
    • Winter 2018 Poetry >
      • Parker Anthony
      • Crystal Condakes Karlberg
      • Julia Lisella
      • Cynthia Atkins
      • Claudine Nash
    • Essays Summer 2017 >
      • Interview with Gail Entrekin
      • Patricia Reis
      • John Nelson
      • Mary Baures
      • Monette Bebow-Reinhard
      • M.J. Iuppa
    • Fiction Summer 2017 >
      • Jean Ryan
      • Daniel Hudon
      • Ray Keifetz
      • Anne Elliott
      • C.S. Malerich
      • Sascha Morrell
    • Art Summer 2017 >
      • Sara Roizen
      • Jill Slaymaker
      • John Mark Jennings
      • Janel Houton
      • Brandon Gorski
      • Tara White
      • Nancy Dudley
      • Elisabetta Lucchi
    • Poetry Summer 2017 >
      • Megan Merchant
      • Joey Gould
      • Claudine Nash
      • M.R. Smith
      • Kim Aubrey
      • Vivian Wagner
    • Winter 2017 Poetry >
      • Dan King
      • Kathleen Byron
      • Sam Bresnahan
      • Olivia McCormack
      • Danny Romanovitz
      • Kyle Quinn
    • Winter 2017 Art >
      • Elliott Grinnell
      • Olivia McCormack
      • Brendan Brown
      • Lauren Waisnor
    • Winter 2017 Essays >
      • Kathleen Byron
      • Eddie Marshall
      • Sofia Colvin
      • Ishita Pandey
      • Mohsin Tunio
    • Summer 2016 Fiction >
      • Jyotsna Sreenivasan
    • Summer 2016 Art The Women Artists and Writers Exhibit
    • Summer 2016 Poetry >
      • Colleen Michaels
      • Jennifer Markell
      • Tara Masih
      • Holly Guran
      • Heather Nelson
      • Bahareh Amidi
      • Alison Stone
      • Julia Travers
      • Amy Jo Trier-Walker
    • Summer 2016 Essays >
      • Olivia Kate Cerrone
      • Katelyn Gilbert
      • Kim-Marie Walker
      • Bahareh Amidi
    • Winter 2016 Fiction >
      • Blue Vinyl, Green Vinyl
      • The Cresting Water
    • Winter 2016 Art >
      • San Giovanni D'Asso Landscape Paintings
      • It's All About the River
      • Jellyfish Sculptural Drawings
    • Winter 2016 Poetry >
      • Poems from Songs in the Storm
    • Winter 2016 Essays >
      • The Gleaners
      • The Aliveness Project
      • Named
    • Summer 2015 Fiction >
      • The Cloak
      • Sanctuary
    • Summer 2015 Art >
      • Environmental Art
      • Compassion in the Midst of Violence
      • Burn Myself Completely for Him and Souls
      • Eye of Oneness
      • Stepping Forward
    • Summer 2015 Poetry >
      • Poem With a Question From Neruda and INDICTMENT
      • The Humans
      • Afghan Boy and other poems
      • Reparations
      • Transference and other poems
    • Summer 2015 Essays >
      • The Ineffable Aspects of Forgiveness
      • He Was Better Than I’ll Ever Be
      • A Voice in the Desert
    • Winter 2015 Fiction >
      • White Heron
      • Freeing a Little of the Madness
    • Winter 2015 Art >
      • Cascade of Care and Life
      • Sentience
      • A Paternal Instant
      • Aurora, Paloma, and the Melangolo Tree
      • Seated Pose
      • Antigone's Map
      • Ladder
    • Winter 2015 Poetry >
      • Dissolution of the Soviet Union
      • Nicknames
      • Stopped at a Light,
      • Why mate for life? Red crown crane
      • The Prisoner
      • Stigmata
      • "Oh don't," she said. "It's cold."
      • Convene
    • Winter 2015 Essays >
      • The Forgiveness Project
      • A Stranger on a Subway
      • A Journey to Compassion
      • The Question of Compassion
      • Reflections on a Childhood Deforested
      • Click, Click, Click
Image by Laura Gurton

Sentient Networks
Letter from the Editor
 
In a dream, I was on a bus heading in the wrong direction, farther away from my home, and I asked to be let out. I trudged on foot and met up with my former biology teacher who was with his class on an expedition. I joined them, hoping they would take me closer to home. But the group ultimately scattered, and the teacher went on the hunt for some exotic animal. Then a man appeared, a man who could have been a friend’s father but looked more like my uncle Eddy, and he said he could take me home. We walked through a labyrinth of neighborhoods, none of which looked familiar with their green slopes and Tudor-like houses abutting the sea. Despite this enchanting landscape, I felt even more restless and apprehensive. I hungered for my own familiar space, for the people I loved. Finally we reached a bakery where a tremendous mechanism was slicing humongous loaves of bread. I stared into the metal jaws of the mechanism, thinking how good it would be if it could gnash this palpable angst inside me to pieces. And then I woke up.
 
These dreams—and there have been many in all stages of my life—emphasize deep-rooted fears of being out of my comfort zone. It’s a metaphor for me, but for many people, for refugees, runaways, victims of natural disasters, emigrants and the like, the idea of home exists only in the mind, because the tangible place is no longer a reality. I could only surmise what this could do to the psyche and the elements of the body.
 
Recently I posted a BBC video on the hidden and intricate network of tree roots underneath the surface of the Earth. Through the aid of fungi (which, to me, resemble Laura Gurton’s magnificent art work ) inherent in these networks, trees communicate with one another. They help each other and sometimes work to sabotage each other. I found this phenomenon quite exciting, not only because it confirmed what I always believed—that trees are sentient beings—but because it is an example of a sentient network. These sentient networks can also apply to human compassion; we have seen it in the Underground Railroad, the Germans who hid the Jews during World War II, the White Helmets of Syria, and most recently RAICES, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency that promotes justice by providing free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees. I should also give a shout-out here to the Blocchi Precari Metropolitani (BPM), an organization working to provide homes to migrant families in Rome by using art as a fortress (see my review of the movie
GIFT). These grass roots organizations are examples of the better angels of our natures, of our capacity to be sentient and moral and active.
 
And then there are the people working without a network; the protagonists in Ruth Mukwana’s story “The Minister” and Andrea Gregory’s “My Bosnians” exemplify this type of person—brave souls who act to satisfy their moral hearts, despite not knowing how or having a plan or having help.
 
Since the beginning of this publication, we have seen cities like Aleppo be bombed to pieces. We have seen refugees in rafts, people wash up along the shores of Europe. We have witnessed the devastation of hurricanes and fires. We have, most abhorrently, witnessed children detained in cages, separated from their families by our own government. Indeed, Mercy for the Displaced is a timely theme.
 
Many thanks go to Jennifer Martelli and Jessica Cook who helped put the spring edition together; Catherine Parnell from CONSEQUENCE magazine, as well as Carla Goldberg, Russ Ritell, and David Link from the Art for Aleppo project for giving us permission to publish their content; and of course our brilliant contributors who are thinking and creating around this important subject, validating those who are suffering while also being a part of the subtle and not-so-subtle sentient networks at work.
 
Yours in compassion and creativity,


Picture
Laurette Folk, Senior Editor of The Compassion Anthology
Proudly powered by Weebly