"Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbing -- resistance to experiencing our pain for the world and other beings." -- Joanna Macy
Easter weekend gave all of us a lot -- time to contemplate, time with friends and family, a riot of spring with gorgeous hues of green, soft pinks, jazzy Redbud trees, yellows and whites exploding at every turn, and every bird imaginable orchestrating a song of new life that rivals that of the "The Hallelujah Chorus."
With the riot of spring as my soundtrack, strangely enough while digging into my garden this weekend, my thoughts turned to compassion. After the deep sleep of winter, spring is Nature's compassion for us in every way, both practical and spiritual -- from giving us more direct sun to warm the soil and grow the crops we need to survive, to turning the inward gray of winter into the outward buzz of glorious green we revel in. Nature's compassion infuses us with a bit of giddiness as we turn our faces to the sun, and in turn we humans seem to soften a bit in the passionate first blush of spring.
This softening moves me beyond self-imposed rigidity and into the heart of diversity, to setting aside long-held grudges and opinions, to deconstructing walls of rationalization, to listening beyond words to emotions lying underneath -- my own emotions and those of others. Usually I find fear of "something" underlies our most deeply held anger and prejudices, so this is never an easy task, even in the optimistic light of spring, yet the season beckons us to loosen the binds of fear, to embrace hope, to find balance between the two, letting both inform our world without controlling it.
Just as my garden involves hard sweaty work, so to does this unbinding of the heart and softening of the soul. It is made more difficult if I am blaming and labeling the other (whoever the other may be) which is course a most human thing to do. But so often while blaming I am also ignoring my own complicity in the matter at hand, or rationalizing my behavior to the point finding a solution becomes more challenging. And all the blaming only leads to more division, less compassion, more fear and loathing of ourselves and others. This doesn't mean we abrogate our values; it does mean we don't become so entrenched in them we can no longer see multiple sides to an issue.
I've found certain underlying principles and values make my garden stronger -- diversity of plant life, appropriate scale, nurturing soil, sighting to suit each plant's need for sun. But I've also found that these principles, values and ideas for gardening are constantly evolving. Each year I learn a little more. Each year I try something new or different, adjust, recalibrate, try again. If I close my mind to other ideas for my garden, then it may not cease to grow but it will certainly stagnate. Remaining open to what I can learn from others -- from beginners to seasoned master gardeners - means gardening becomes a journey in potential, an unending growing adventure.

So too growing compassion involves remaining open to the Universe and evolving our ideas about how we move, live and be. It means we advocate for correcting injustices with great humility and some degree of open-mindedness, working for solutions, and setting aside our own egos and need for attention in service to a greater cause.
When we can do this, we blossom from the inside. Like the Grinch whose heart grew two sizes, we can feel our own hearts expanding like flowers opening to pollination by potential, to possibility, to something much greater than individual self. By doing so we stand a greater chance of breaking down long-held barriers, myths and assumptions about each other. By doing so we learn what is possible and what must wait for another day. By doing so we find clarity and inner serenity.
Growing compassion, whether lending a hand or listening to the least among us, helping the suffering, holding a hand in times of depression or fear or sorrow, doing these things when no one is watching, when it is anonymous, unseen by by peers, seen by only by an expanding Universe, may be the hardest thing in the world to do, and yet, in grace-filled serendipity, it's the most important work we'll ever do.