The Question of Compassion
by Lorraine Padden
The essay below is excerpted from a speech Lorraine delivered in June of 2011 to graduates of the Education for Ministry Program (EFM) at the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, CA.
I will admit that I have always considered myself a person of relatively little faith, though I joined the Episcopal Church just a few years ago. When I first approached the Education for Ministry Program (EFM), I felt quite excited by a scholarly study of the Bible, the historical Jesus, the early church, and the evolution of our various modern traditions. I’ve always felt at home with secular analyses of these topics.
So I found the “ministry” part of the EFM title intimidating. I hiccupped a bit throughout those four years when our group would try on the various EFM “lenses” through which we could deepen our faith and discern our call to service. Ministry as I understood it then, was for clergy, for those who felt an ache in their bones to serve the Lord or for those lay people who seem to enjoy effortless faith, not for me, who (in my own head) was the first and only EFM student to be plagued by doubt—about the presence of God in the world at all—let alone in my life.
But I must admit that what really gnawed at me was doubt about whether I could really open myself up to what was ahead. I wondered deeply whether I could really sacrifice closely held beliefs and stereotypes so that I could “love my neighbor” as myself. Whether or not I knew God, I did believe in this one true commandment, and the question of how I could respond to this instruction, for me, had everything to do with my frail human capacity. I was terrified.
What I have learned after 4 years, however, is that we live our way into the answers to those questions that frighten us the most. The EFM “road to Jerusalem” if you will, is paved with small, personal interactions that press us to expand our notions of what should and shouldn’t exist in the world. It presses us to develop the capacity to truly listen to one another, to peer in wonder at someone else’s unique view of the world and of God. As we bear witness in this way, so do we learn to truly love—and be ministers of that love—to ourselves and to others.
Our particular EFM group was made up of a diverse and curious bunch of folks whose individual journeys of faith were paths yielding stories that were as individual as our own fingerprints. Yet, I think we might all recognize a through line in our EFM inquiry that has something to do with the hand of God— the hand of God at work in us and in the world. What does this mean? In our group, some of us might describe the hand of God as a nest of daily nurture and comfort, a tender notion of being held. For others, God is a presence in the periphery of the cosmos, that “harmony with an unseen order of things” that William James offered as a definition of faith over a century ago.
There is no one definition, one sense of the presence of God that seems to fit us all.
I’d like to offer a snapshot of our St. Mary’s group. We were women and men, gay and straight, married, divorced and widowed, in love and in conflict with our families. We brought together a spiritual heritage that included traditions of the Episcopal Church, the evangelical Southern Baptist Church, Buddhism, Eastern Orthodox Mysticism as well as the Roman Catholic Church and its Novitiate.
One of us was undergoing kidney dialysis three days a week, and when she attended the often torturous 3-hour plus transfusion, she offered support and counsel to other folks who were similarly tethered to the technology that prolonged their lives. I couldn’t imagine tolerating the physical pain of that situation let alone having the presence of heart to offer a non-judgmental ear to others who are similarly afflicted. Her mother and sister accompanied and stayed through all dialysis appointments. Their bond as a family and the grace with which these three women live in relationship with others was an inspiration—one we would all be blessed to know in our own families.
Another member of our group was allowing his creative spirit to blossom by venturing to make a series of important statements about human rights. The issue concerned the battles women face in order to keep their children in a divorce settlement. It’s a complicated myth (certainly here in California and elsewhere) that mothers are generally awarded custody of their kids when couples part company. In many cases women without copious resources (and by that I mean women without a lot of money) are often demeaned, dismissed and under-represented in settlement disputes, a trend that smacks of hidden discrimination. Tentatively called “The Custody Project,” our EFM member was writing and producing a film based on an actual case and will launch ancillary projects such as a feature-length documentary, video logs and a weekly blog with contributions from noted attorneys and activists who are passionate about mothers’ custody rights. This project gives real teeth to the definition of justice that Princeton professor Cornel West suggests is “what love looks like in public.”
My own anecdote involves my father. He was an author and professor of history, and I have always assumed that he read the Bible as an investigator. My dad always referred to himself as an agnostic. He was baptized Catholic but he lost his father at a very young age. Family lore has it that my grandmother never again attended mass after her husband’s death; to my knowledge, none of her kids did, either.
My father is now 88 and suffers from Alzheimer’s Dementia, an illness that ungraciously affords him the intellect of a toddler. I visit him in Maine every few months. Early on in our St. Mary’s EFM studies, I’d miss an occasional class because I was back East. So, I would take the relevant Parallel Guide chapter or Common Lesson with me and trusted that I’d find a Bible somewhere in my parent’s house. I eventually found my dad’s King James high on a shelf in the living room. I opened to the relevant chapter and discovered notes and questions penciled in the margins of various passages of the Old Testament. That’s not so unusual—a scholar analyzing and notating material for a lecture—but the questions he wrote were posed as if he were directly addressing the author, as if he were asking the author how, for example, the slaughter of the innocents could have been condoned by Herod, or anyone else.
My father and I never discussed the Bible, or religion in general. For most of the years I have known him, my father suffered from angry tendencies that precluded the capacity for us to have a mutually respectful dialogue on most topics. So, when I discovered my father’s notes in the margins, this glimpse of how he might have had a more personal relationship with scripture, my heart broke. And while I grieve not having the opportunity to discuss issues of faith with my dad while he was still cogent, I am immensely grateful for this gift of insight I might never have realized if EFM had not guided me to these pages of the Old Testament.
It’s like a story I heard once about a Rabbi answering the question of a small child who asked why God puts lessons of love and compassion on our hearts rather than in them. The Rabbi responded, “The lessons are on your heart so that when your heart breaks, the lessons fall in.”
I would add that when we let our hearts break, we understand what Joan Chittister means when she said that, “It takes a lifetime to really understand that God is what is standing in front of us.”
I see just the slightest glimmer of God standing in front of me now whenever I spend time with my dad. He is present in the moment, he forgets his anger; he laughs easily and smiles often. When I tell him I love him my dad says, “Yeah.”
I’d add to Joan Chittister’s timeline an additional 4 years of EFM study to realize that whenever we put our own expectations aside, whenever we open our hearts to empathize with another point of view, whenever we put our own ideas to rest so others can be fully heard and seen, we risk breaking our hearts open so that God may plant seeds of compassion and divine wisdom.
Lorraine Padden is a professional ballet dancer, scholar, essayist and networker among innovative interfaith leaders. Lorraine has earned national awards for academic and artistic achievement, including an appointment at the National Endowment for the Arts.
by Lorraine Padden
The essay below is excerpted from a speech Lorraine delivered in June of 2011 to graduates of the Education for Ministry Program (EFM) at the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, CA.
I will admit that I have always considered myself a person of relatively little faith, though I joined the Episcopal Church just a few years ago. When I first approached the Education for Ministry Program (EFM), I felt quite excited by a scholarly study of the Bible, the historical Jesus, the early church, and the evolution of our various modern traditions. I’ve always felt at home with secular analyses of these topics.
So I found the “ministry” part of the EFM title intimidating. I hiccupped a bit throughout those four years when our group would try on the various EFM “lenses” through which we could deepen our faith and discern our call to service. Ministry as I understood it then, was for clergy, for those who felt an ache in their bones to serve the Lord or for those lay people who seem to enjoy effortless faith, not for me, who (in my own head) was the first and only EFM student to be plagued by doubt—about the presence of God in the world at all—let alone in my life.
But I must admit that what really gnawed at me was doubt about whether I could really open myself up to what was ahead. I wondered deeply whether I could really sacrifice closely held beliefs and stereotypes so that I could “love my neighbor” as myself. Whether or not I knew God, I did believe in this one true commandment, and the question of how I could respond to this instruction, for me, had everything to do with my frail human capacity. I was terrified.
What I have learned after 4 years, however, is that we live our way into the answers to those questions that frighten us the most. The EFM “road to Jerusalem” if you will, is paved with small, personal interactions that press us to expand our notions of what should and shouldn’t exist in the world. It presses us to develop the capacity to truly listen to one another, to peer in wonder at someone else’s unique view of the world and of God. As we bear witness in this way, so do we learn to truly love—and be ministers of that love—to ourselves and to others.
Our particular EFM group was made up of a diverse and curious bunch of folks whose individual journeys of faith were paths yielding stories that were as individual as our own fingerprints. Yet, I think we might all recognize a through line in our EFM inquiry that has something to do with the hand of God— the hand of God at work in us and in the world. What does this mean? In our group, some of us might describe the hand of God as a nest of daily nurture and comfort, a tender notion of being held. For others, God is a presence in the periphery of the cosmos, that “harmony with an unseen order of things” that William James offered as a definition of faith over a century ago.
There is no one definition, one sense of the presence of God that seems to fit us all.
I’d like to offer a snapshot of our St. Mary’s group. We were women and men, gay and straight, married, divorced and widowed, in love and in conflict with our families. We brought together a spiritual heritage that included traditions of the Episcopal Church, the evangelical Southern Baptist Church, Buddhism, Eastern Orthodox Mysticism as well as the Roman Catholic Church and its Novitiate.
One of us was undergoing kidney dialysis three days a week, and when she attended the often torturous 3-hour plus transfusion, she offered support and counsel to other folks who were similarly tethered to the technology that prolonged their lives. I couldn’t imagine tolerating the physical pain of that situation let alone having the presence of heart to offer a non-judgmental ear to others who are similarly afflicted. Her mother and sister accompanied and stayed through all dialysis appointments. Their bond as a family and the grace with which these three women live in relationship with others was an inspiration—one we would all be blessed to know in our own families.
Another member of our group was allowing his creative spirit to blossom by venturing to make a series of important statements about human rights. The issue concerned the battles women face in order to keep their children in a divorce settlement. It’s a complicated myth (certainly here in California and elsewhere) that mothers are generally awarded custody of their kids when couples part company. In many cases women without copious resources (and by that I mean women without a lot of money) are often demeaned, dismissed and under-represented in settlement disputes, a trend that smacks of hidden discrimination. Tentatively called “The Custody Project,” our EFM member was writing and producing a film based on an actual case and will launch ancillary projects such as a feature-length documentary, video logs and a weekly blog with contributions from noted attorneys and activists who are passionate about mothers’ custody rights. This project gives real teeth to the definition of justice that Princeton professor Cornel West suggests is “what love looks like in public.”
My own anecdote involves my father. He was an author and professor of history, and I have always assumed that he read the Bible as an investigator. My dad always referred to himself as an agnostic. He was baptized Catholic but he lost his father at a very young age. Family lore has it that my grandmother never again attended mass after her husband’s death; to my knowledge, none of her kids did, either.
My father is now 88 and suffers from Alzheimer’s Dementia, an illness that ungraciously affords him the intellect of a toddler. I visit him in Maine every few months. Early on in our St. Mary’s EFM studies, I’d miss an occasional class because I was back East. So, I would take the relevant Parallel Guide chapter or Common Lesson with me and trusted that I’d find a Bible somewhere in my parent’s house. I eventually found my dad’s King James high on a shelf in the living room. I opened to the relevant chapter and discovered notes and questions penciled in the margins of various passages of the Old Testament. That’s not so unusual—a scholar analyzing and notating material for a lecture—but the questions he wrote were posed as if he were directly addressing the author, as if he were asking the author how, for example, the slaughter of the innocents could have been condoned by Herod, or anyone else.
My father and I never discussed the Bible, or religion in general. For most of the years I have known him, my father suffered from angry tendencies that precluded the capacity for us to have a mutually respectful dialogue on most topics. So, when I discovered my father’s notes in the margins, this glimpse of how he might have had a more personal relationship with scripture, my heart broke. And while I grieve not having the opportunity to discuss issues of faith with my dad while he was still cogent, I am immensely grateful for this gift of insight I might never have realized if EFM had not guided me to these pages of the Old Testament.
It’s like a story I heard once about a Rabbi answering the question of a small child who asked why God puts lessons of love and compassion on our hearts rather than in them. The Rabbi responded, “The lessons are on your heart so that when your heart breaks, the lessons fall in.”
I would add that when we let our hearts break, we understand what Joan Chittister means when she said that, “It takes a lifetime to really understand that God is what is standing in front of us.”
I see just the slightest glimmer of God standing in front of me now whenever I spend time with my dad. He is present in the moment, he forgets his anger; he laughs easily and smiles often. When I tell him I love him my dad says, “Yeah.”
I’d add to Joan Chittister’s timeline an additional 4 years of EFM study to realize that whenever we put our own expectations aside, whenever we open our hearts to empathize with another point of view, whenever we put our own ideas to rest so others can be fully heard and seen, we risk breaking our hearts open so that God may plant seeds of compassion and divine wisdom.
Lorraine Padden is a professional ballet dancer, scholar, essayist and networker among innovative interfaith leaders. Lorraine has earned national awards for academic and artistic achievement, including an appointment at the National Endowment for the Arts.