Can Compassion Become the New Civic Virtue?

Posted: 19 Feb 2011 11:49 AM PST

By Mary Jaksch

Compassion has a bad rap. Well, maybe not bad, but at least squishy.
It’s equated with weakness, with saccharine spirituality, with turning
the other cheek instead of fighting back, with heroic self-sacrifice too
good to be true, with feel-good stories stuck right at the end of news
casts.
But what if we thought about compassion in a new way?
In the video below, journalist Krista Tippett deconstructs the
meaning of compassion through several moving stories, and proposes a
new, more attainable definition for the word.
(If you can’t see the video, go here to watch it.)
ANGEL IN HIKING BOOTS

Angels don’t always announce their
arrival.  And sometimes the helper is an ordinary person acting like an
angel. Either way, they change our lives.  Tammy Kline would agree.

Tammy, her husband Rich and several others had embarked upon a climb on the Grand Canyon. 
An experienced hiker (and married to one), Tammy had never had a
serious problem climbing hills in Colorado.  But now as the group
approached Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Canyon, the huge uneven steps going down the trail
were about 18 inches apart.  Each time Tammy landed on one, she jarred
her knee and gradually the pain began.  At first, as she soaked her leg
in a cold creek along the way, she thought she would be fine. “We
reached Phantom Ranch around lunch time, and I would be able to rest
until our early departure the next day,” she says.  “I kept my leg iced,
elevated, and wrapped.  My husband, Rich, went to the general store and
bought an Ace bandage because the wrap that was in our first-aid kit wasn’t supportive enough.”  The bandage didn’t seem to help either.

But
as the time passed and the pain continued, Tammy began to worry. How
was she going to get out of this situation? What if her leg didn’t
respond to rest?  If she needed a mule to ride, would one be available?
What if she got part way up the mountain, and couldn’t go any further? 
“I prayed all night that God would help me find a way out,” Tammy says. 
“This trip had been Rich’s dream since I could remember and I didn’t
want to let him down.” 

The next morning, the hikers were on the
trail by dawn. Rich set a slow pace up the Canyon and the group stopped
frequently. But the rest had done little if anything to relieve Tammy’s
pain.  And by the time they stopped for a break at Indian Garden, she
was wondering if she could take another step.

A climber named
Tom was there finishing his break.  He had passed their group earlier
that morning, and now noticed Tammy’s limping. “Trouble with your knee?”
he asked her.

“The wrap I’m using isn’t supportive enough,” she
told him, “and every time my foot hits a rock, the pain shoots through
my leg.”  She sighed, looking around.  There were rocks everywhere. 

“I have an extra compression knee brace in my pack,” Tom remarked.  “Let me find it.”

An
extra compression brace?  As unlikely as an extra pot of gold, Tammy
thought.  And it surely wouldn’t fit---Tammy was very small, and Tom was
large.  She held her breath as Tom pulled out the brace and handed it
to her.  It fit her perfectly.

Tom did not vanish,as angels
sometimes do.  He simply waved away her thanks, and continued up the
path. The trip was still very trying for Tammy.  “But the brace, unlike
the wrap, held my knee rigid and it didn’t twist every time I stepped on
a rock,” she says.  “We made it to the top in about eight hours, which
is within the average time span.  But I don’t think I could have made it
without Tom. He saved our vacation.”  And if that’s not what angels do,
what is?

For many days after this experience, Tammy could think
of little else.  It was such an obvious answer to her prayers.  “I know
in the depth of my heart that God answers prayers,” she says.  “And he truly listens when we talk to Him and open our hearts so we can see and understand His answers.”

Here is a link to another “earth angel,” who has made something beautiful come out of a difficult situation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lfaSmDxVZQ

Copyright
2011 by Joan Wester Anderson. Published by Joan Wester Anderson, P.O.
Box 127, Prospect Heights, IL 60070. For more stories of God's love,
check the blog at https://www.joanwanderson.com.