PITY AND COMPASSION

The insightful Howard Thurman (1899-1981) author, theologian and philosopher wrote: distinguishing between pity and compassion:  

“God is making room in my heart for compassion. There is already a vast abundance of room for pity … [including] self-pity, that sticky substance that ruins everything it touches… There is pity in me—pity for others. But there is something in it that cannot be trusted; it is mixed with pride, arrogance, cunning. I see this only when I expose myself to the eyes of God in the quiet time. It is now that I see what my pity really is and the sources from which it springs.  

God is making room in my heart for compassion: the awareness that where my life begins is where your life begins; the awareness that … your needs cannot be separated from … my needs, the awareness that the joys of my heart are never mine alone—nor are my sorrows. I struggle against the work of God in my heart; I want to be let alone. I want my boundaries to remain fixed, that I may be at rest. But even now, as I turn to [God] in the quietness, [God’s] work in me is ever the same. God is at work enlarging the boundaries of my heart.”

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Jesus