+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Maybe I think about things too much, but I am not sure I know what compassion is.  Sometimes I think I ‘have it’ and then I find myself looking around at other people and judging them for NOT having it!

I am thinking in specific about a man a little over 55 who worked a Title V job at our local thrift store and quit two weeks ago.  This man had a shady past, true.  He had shady behaviors while working at the store that probably would have gotten him soon fired if he had stayed.

The workers, all friendly acquaintances of mine over these past 10 years, strongly suspected that this man kept out the best of the donations to the store and figured out ways to steal them.  It was suspected that he was using a fraudulent identity.  He was known to concoct intricate stories about his life that were not true.  Someone in town had seen him selling drugs to young people.  Nearly everyone believed that after a few years clean from using drugs himself, that he had returned to his old habits.

A week ago today he walked in the back door of his girlfriend’s house where he also lived, grabbed a gun, and blew his brains out.  His girlfriend, who I’ve never met, was in the front room at the time this happened.  Over this past week I have listened to everyone I know who knew him talk about his death but only one spoke about him with compassion.  The rest seem to both judge him and want to hold him somehow accountable for the questionable way he lived his life.

I have someone whom I love very much in my life, a family member, who was able twenty years ago to kick the chronic and destructive use of alcohol, heroin and meth.  I spent time with him at the end of his active disease simply loving him because I could see how terribly sick he was and there was nothing else I could do for him.  I saw how the meth created the incredible web of lies, a complex, sinister and unfortunately almost believable arrangement of his life that he spun with his words that I eventually found out had absolutely zero basis in reality.

I see the death of this ex-thrift store employee in this light.  He died from a terrible disease.  His disease affected his living and it led directly to his death.

I find myself right now confused about arrogance (ignorance?), self-righteousness, judgment and criticism.  At the same time that I evidently recognize a whole other level to the demise of this man that many others don’t seem able to, perhaps I really am not exercising compassion because at the same time I have to fight with myself not to judge ‘the others’.

I don’t see this man as a ‘bad man’, and yet from other people’s accounts maybe he was.  I think he was sick and ACTED bad at times, but he’s dead now.  I want to say, “Give the man a break!  He suffered the ultimate crisis and he paid with his life.”

I want ME — and THEM — to be able to pray for him.  I believe he deserves to be blessed out of this life now by everyone who knew him and held gently and kindly in thought and in word, if some continue to be spoken about him.  I feel disappointed with these people I know and like — while at the same time I am, myself, judging them — and then judging myself.

I guess sometimes life can seem so tragic and complicated.  Then I remember what I believe – though I can’t say that I understand this either:  There is a God so much bigger than I can ever imagine and that God is, as my son told me emphatically when he was four years old, “the boss of all of us.”

Many times today I have thought about this wisdom.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Oh, and here’s a mothering note.  One of the nurses caring for my grandson told my daughter that studies have shown that unlike men, mother’s bodies automatically adjust their temperature to stabilize the temperature of their newborns!  My daughter had noticed this as she cuddled and nursed her premie.  She happily told the nurse, “Yes, that’s what my mother always tells me, that mother’s are physiologically specially designed to care for newborns and young infants in ways that men ARE NOT!”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++