Listen Uninterruptedly
People
who vent out their emotions are usually considered to be weak. This is so
absurd. It requires great courage to weep and feel the pain of embarrassment. Jesus
never withheld his emotions but expressed them unabashed. He was not even
ashamed to weep something which the toxic masculinity prohibits a man to do.
Our basic understanding of masculinity itself is skewed. Men are expected not
to be emotionally friable and thus we see men camouflaging their emotional
fragility through anger, resentment, restlessness and the like. Men are
culturally conditioned to believe that the lacrimal gland which secretes tears
is only present in women. Falling prey to the expectations of society we have
forgotten our basic existential being. Sarah Rich remarks;
When school officials and parents
send a message to children that “boyish” girls are badass but “girlish” boys
are embarrassing, they are telling kids that society values and rewards
masculinity, but not femininity. They are not just keeping individual boys from
free self-expression, but they are keeping women down too. It is lopsided to
approach gender equality by focusing only on girls’ empowerment… It’s a societal loss that so many
men grow up believing that showing aggression and stifling emotion are the ways
to signal manhood. And it’s a personal loss to countless little boys who, at
best, develop mechanisms for compartmentalizing certain aspects of who they are
and, at worst, deny those aspects out of existence.[1]
Jesus
was an ambivalent person. He was a full human and his humanity cannot be
limited to manhood. Humanity consists of masculinity, femininity and even queerness and thus affirming only one (masculinity) while denying the other two is a
threat to the basics of Christology as we could no longer argue that Christ was
fully human. This fluidity exhibited within the humanity of Christ is the
matrix of Queer Christology. Queerness of Christ refers to the unsettling
nature. Because of the ambivalence intrinsic to the personhood of Jesus he
expressed his emotions unrestrained. One such emotion exhibited by Jesus is
compassion.
Compassion
is not mere sympathy. The Greek word for compassion is splagchnizomai. Compassion is an inadequate English equivalent. Splagchnizomai is an emotion that
springs from the entrails; it initiates a movement. This is the reason why
Bible testifies that Jesus was “moved with compassion”. To be compassionate
necessitates an action rather than being a mere spectator acknowledging the unfortunate
situation. Compassion is more of empathetic in nature. Now what does it mean to
be empathetic? Rebekah Cempe explains it well;
In order to empathize with others
with different life experiences, we have to lay down our pride and accept that
we don’t “get it,” but that we believe them. What does this look like? Men who
don’t experience habitual, casual harassment believing the stories of women who
do. People who appreciate law enforcement accepting that the uniform they
respect incites fear in others. Straight people believing LGBTQ people when
they share they’ve felt rejected by the church. Abled-bodied people listening
to and making accommodations for disabled people who are frustrated by
inaccessibility. White people listening to the grievances of people of colour,
and taking steps to remedy any hurt they have caused.[2]
Buddhism
puts forth a gender fluid spirit of compassion known as Kuan Yin which is akin
to the queer Christ affirmed by LGBTIQ communities. Kuan Yin oversteps the
gender demarcations to reach out to people.
Transcending gender identity,
Kuan Yin appears in whatever form is necessary to help people in need:
sometimes female, sometimes male and sometimes androgynous. Christians honor
Christ as savior, and Kuan Yin is a type of Buddhist saviour figure called a
bodhisattva — an enlightened person who is able to reach nirvana (heaven) but
delays doing so out of compassion in order to save others from suffering.
Artists often show Kuan Yin with eyes in the hands and feet. They are like the
wounds of Christ, but Kuan Yin can see with them. Kuan Yin is also associated with
the mother of Christ. When Christianity was persecuted in Edo-era Japan, the
“hidden Christians” created states of Mary disguised as Kuan Yin.[3]
Compassion
is the humility to delve into the experiences of the suffering ones to tangibly
understand their ordeals. It is to show the courtesy to listen without being
pretentious of understanding and constantly interrupting the affected with the
phrase “I do understand”. No you do not. The prime concern required for
compassion is to modestly accept the fact that I understand that I do not
understand.
There are experiences I don’t,
and never will be able to, understand. I don’t know what it’s like to be a
black man worried about being pulled over. I don’t know the burden of a refugee
at the border. I don’t know what it’s like to be dependent on a wheelchair. I
don’t know what it’s like to have depression. I don’t know what it’s like to be
gay in a church. I don’t know what it’s like to be homeless. There are a lot of
things I don’t know. There are a lot of things you don’t know.[4]
Compassion
is also interpreted as a virtue. Dictionary defines virtue as being morally
perfect. We could be morally perfect yet ethically unjust (Pharisees) or
morally imperfect yet ethically just (Jesus). Christians are called not to be
morally perfect but ethically just and thus to be virtuous is to be
self-critical. Emma Brown Dewhurst writes;
When we think of virtue and seek
to follow the commandment of love, we become aware of the way in which our
lives harm others and the way that our communities institutionalize and
rationalize these hurtful relationships. Part of our attempt to make space for
virtue then, must involve a critical awareness of the places in our lives where
our own comfort comes at the expense of others, of the instances where turning
a blind eye to suffering is easier than contemplating how we are caught up in
its complicity, and of the structures and institutions that perpetuate the
poverty and hardship of our neighbors, whether they be standing next to us or
thousands of miles away.[5]
Lent
is a time to be compassionate and being compassionate means to be proactive
rather than mere sympathizing. It demands uninterrupted listening and empathetic
discernment about the tribulations of the suffering one. At the same time for
compassion to be a virtue it mandates self-critical reflection contemplating
whether we satisfy our wants at the expense of trampling the needs of others;
do the structures we are a part of propagate violence in overt and covert
forms. As we meditate on compassion let us give heed to the words of Eileen
Wiegel Robbins;
"A basic, surface reading of some
texts can lead a person to think that God is out to get us. But even the tone
in which something is read can change how you receive it. Like, when God calls
to Adam and Eve after the fall “Where are you?” People can hear anger, or
people can hear compassion. Makes a world of difference. It's why we need Holy
Spirit. "Amen
Prayers
Dn. Basil Paul
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