"Compassion is a verb." – Thich Nhat Hanh (left)
Many well-meaning people enjoy telling nurses and other caregivers, "Oh, I could never do what you do. I am too sensitive." The surprise in a statement like this is that loving caregivers do their good because they are sensitive.
It takes courage to make compassion a verb in our lives. Compassion, Joseph Goldstein writes in his book, A Heart Full of Peace, is "more than simply a warm feeling." Compassion calls us to move beyond empathy to real service.
Imagine someone you know is suffering right now – physically, emotionally, or spiritually. It may be someone you love who has experienced the sadness of betrayal or the humiliation of a job loss. It may be a patient with cancer who is headed in for their first radiation treatment. It may be someone you see along the highway whose car has broken down.
When we begin to feel some of the others pain, empathy has risen up in our heart. When we take action to ease the pain of this person, we have lived Love..
The actions we take to make compassion a verb in our lives may be as quiet as prayer or as direct as physically helping out the person whose car has broken down. Loving caregivers make compassion a verb every day. They respond to need not primarily because they are paid to help, but because they truly feel the agony of another and want to relieve that agony. They see the sufferer as a fellow human who needs both skilled assistance and loving care.
It takes sincere reflection to make compassion a verb in our lives. It takes courage to reach out from our own comfort into the pain of another. It takes living Love, not fear.
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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