Thought for the day - 'steps on the way to being compassionate'

This week one of my congregation members invited me to their place of work. It is not an invitation I get very often, but one that I will certainly be encouraging from others! Most people probably wonder what a Vicar gets up to all week, we are regularly greeted with the familiar: ‘but don’t you only work on Sunday’s’ jest – but I suppose that for most of us the working life of other people is pretty much a mystery. Perhaps you can reflect on your own working life experience for a moment – where has it taken you and what have your learnt?

The person I visited happened to work in engineering and he took me around the factory floor, meeting the people who worked there and showing me the things they were making. As someone with a mind completely unsuited to anything practical, I was amazed and awed at the things that other people can do.

It got me thinking about the way in which most of us have, in relative terms, quite a small frame of reference: we go to the same shops, the same place of work, see the same people etc. The things that we’re good at we keep on doing and far too little challenge ourselves to take on new skills or move outside our comfort zones. It’s a rare and valuable opportunity to have our horizons expanded and to encounter new things and this is despite the fact that we live in a technological age of advanced communication.

Expansion of the mind seems to me to have a spiritual and ethical dimension, for it can help us in our capacity to relate to and ultimately have compassion for others. And that is what is really important – taking the time to actually listen to another person and really see things from their point of view; whoever they are and wherever they come from.

Compassion is a key spiritual virtue, common to all the major faiths, and it’s fundamental to human well being. It could be described as the ability to step into another’s story for a while and walk alongside them; literally it means to suffer with another. Without any compassion in the world we would all be completely disconnected from each other, isolated individuals without hope of comfort.

So, my gentle nudge this week to myself and to you, is to ask: in what ways can my horizons be broadened this week, not from the safe comfort of the sofa, watching television, nor through the virtual experience of the smart phone or tablet, but through an actual encounter with a real person whose every day experiences are different from mine. Can I take the time to experience their world and can I learn to be more compassionate? In so doing I will have, in a small and real way, made the world a better place.