"The Charter will show that the voice of negativity and violence so
often associated with religion is the minority and that the voice of
compassion is the majority." – from the website: www.charterforcompasion.org (If you go to this website, be sure and click on a lovely 3 1/2 minute video featuring Karen Armstrong.)
"We do not live in a compassionate society," says Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun and member of the Council of Conscience for the Charter of Compassion. Armstrong talks of speaking to numerous religious groups about the need for compassion and often noticing both resentment and resistance. People don't want to accept the imperative to live compassionately, she says, because compassionate living is hard work.
Compassionate living steals from fundamentalists their ability to trumpet their version of faith as the only true way. The notion that a particular denomination or religious pathway is the only avenue to God is, she says, a deep sign of egotism.
This sounds true to me. I have stood before so many audiences to speak of Love and compassion. The beginning is always easy. Everyone agrees that Love sounds like a good thing. But, as soon as I speak of engaging Love in the workplace, I see arms begin to cross over chests (as if to protect the heart) and executives (particularly male ones) begin to squirm.
Compassionate living requires that senior executives and middle managers cede power and arrogance and yield to humility and loving service.
"Compassion is hard work," Armstrong says. She's right, of course. This is why she said on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS that we need an organized initiative to engage this critical work.
Do you live each day in a compassionate workplace? I don't mean to you see occasional acts of compassion. I mean do you think of the culture where you work as being one that is primarily informed by compassion grounded in Love?
What I hear from too many health care workers is that they live in cultures dominated by the god of technology and driven by ferocious budget pressures. There is obviously a place for technology and money in charity service. But these twin gods must always be subordinate to Love, not the other way around.
It is startling to hear how often most of us confuse compassion with pity. In many ways, they are opposites. A saying I have quoted here before goes, "Pity stops and stares. Compassion stoops and shares." Compassion is about imagining ourselves into the needs of the other. It is about living the essence of The Golden Rule. And we all know how hard that it.
If we, as Armstrong says, "do not live in a compassionate society" than how can we change that? What can we do in each of our workplaces to help make compassionate behavior the norm rather than the exception?
-Erie Chapman
P.S. On a personal note, today would have been my father's 104th birthday. I celebrate Erie D. Chapman, Jr., as a leader of great integrity who lived his entire career with the Y.M.C.A. and lived the creed of the "Y" in every aspect of his life.
Journal of Sacred Work 
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