Are You God's Wife?
New York City: It's a cold day in December. A little boy about 10-year-old was standing before a shoe store on Broadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold. A lady approached the boy and said, "My little fellow, why are you looking so earnestly in that window?"
"I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes," was the boy's reply.
The lady took him by the hand and went into the store, and asked the clerk to get a half dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her. She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with a towel.
By this time the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy's feet, she then purchased him a pair of shoes, and tying up the remaining pairs of socks, gave them to him. She patted him on the head and said, "No doubt, my little fellow, you feel more comfortable now?"
As she turned to go, the astonished lad caught her by the hand, and looking up in her face, with tears in his eyes, answered the question with these words: "Are you God's wife?"
Anon
The King's Highway
Once a king had a great highway built for the members of his kingdom. After it was completed, but before it was opened to the public, the king decided to have a contest. He invited as many as desired to participate. Their challenge was to see who could travel the highway the best.
On the day of the contest the people came. Some of them had fine chariots, some had fine clothing, fine hairdos, or great food. Some young men came in their track clothes and ran along the highway. People traveled the highway all day, but each one, when he arrived at the end, complained to the king that there was a large pile of rocks and debris left on the road at one spot and this got in their way and hindered their travel.
At the end of the day, a lone traveler crossed the finish line warily and walked over to the king. He was tired and dirty, but he addressed the king with great respect and handed him a bag of gold. he explained, "I stopped along the way to clear a pile of rocks and debris that was blocking the road. This bag of gold was under it all. I want you to return it to its rightful owner."
The king replied, "You are the rightful owner."
The traveller replied, "Oh no, this is not mine. I've never known such money."
"Oh yes," said the king, "you've earned this gold, for you won my contest. He who travels the road best is he who makes the road smoother for those who will follow."
Anon
Jewish Compassion
Jews are expected to give a tenth of their wealth to the poor as tzedaka (charity).
They believe that this money is owed to the poor and if people do not give it then they are robbing others. Even people who are very poor should still give something.
It is best to give tzedaka as an indefinite loan without interest because this does not cause the embarrassment of a gift and will help people become self-supporting.
The best way of giving is to help a person help themselves so that they may become self-supporting Maimonides If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your poor brother. Rather be open-handed and freely lend him whatever he needs.
Deuteronomy 19:9-10 Many Jews have collection boxes in their homes called pushkes and children are expected to give some of their pocket money as tzedaka.
Jews must also make sure that any excess is also given to the poor:
When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien.
Leviticus 19:9-10 Judaism teaches that it is wrong to let yourself become poor because you then become another person's responsibility:
It is better to make your Sabbath like a weekday than to need other people's support.
Gemilut Hasadim is another type of Jewish charity.
Gemilut Hasadim means kind actions and applies to all types of charitable works. This includes organisations such as Jewish Care, the Norwood Orphanages, soup kitchens to feed the hungry and homeless and world-wide organisations such as Tzedek, which tries to improve the living conditions for people all over the world.
source BBC
A Story of True Compassion
I am a mother of three children, ages 14, 12, and 3, and have recently completed my college degree. The last class I took was Sociology and the teacher was absolutely inspiring with the qualities I wish every human being had.
Her last project of the term was called "Smile." The class was asked to go out and smile at three people and document their reaction. I'm a very friendly person and always smile at everyone and say hello, so I thought this assignment would be a piece of cake.
One crisp March morning, soon after we were assigned the project, my husband, youngest son, and I went to McDonald's Restaurant for breakfast. It was our way of sharing special play time with our son. While we were standing in line waiting to be served, all of a sudden everyone around us began to back away, including my husband. But, I didn't move an inch.
An overwhelming feeling of panic welled up inside me as I turned to see why they had moved. As I turned around, I smelled a horrible "dirty body" smell ... and standing there behind me were two poor homeless men. As I looked down at the short gentleman close to me, he was smiling and his beautiful sky-blue eyes were full of God's light as he searched for acceptance.
He said "good day" as he counted the few coins he had been clutching. The second man fumbled with his hands as he stood behind his friend. Then, I realized he was mentally deficient and the blue-eyed gentleman was his salvation. I held back tears as I stood there with them.
The young lady at the counter asked him what they wanted and he said, "Coffee is all, Miss" because that was all they could afford. To sit in the restaurant and warm up, they had to buy something and they just wanted to be warm. Then, I felt a compulsion so great that I almost reached out and embraced the little man with the blue eyes.
And, that's when I noticed that all eyes in the restaurant were on me, judging my every action. I smiled and asked the young lady behind the counter to give me two more breakfast meals on a separate tray. Then, I walked around the corner to the table where the men were resting. After putting the tray on the table, I laid my hand on the blue-eyed gentleman's cold hand. And, with tears in his eyes, he looked up at me and said, "Thank you."
Then, I leaned over, patted his hand and said, "I did not do this for you. God is here working through me to give you hope." I started to cry as I walked away to join my husband and son. When I sat down, my husband smiled at me and said, "That's why God gave you to me honey ... to give me hope." We held hands for a moment and, at that time, we knew that it was only because of God's grace that we were able to give.
That experience showed me the pure light of God's sweet love. I returned to college on the last evening of class with this story in hand. I turned in my project and when the instructor read it, she looked up at me and said, "May I share this?" Slowly, I nodded as she got the attention of the class.
When she began to read, that's when I knew that we, as human beings and part of God, share the need to heal. In my own way, I had touched the people at McDonald's, my husband, son, instructor, and every soul that shared the classroom on the last night I spent as a college student.
I graduated with one of the most important lessons I would ever learn: unconditional acceptance. We are here to learn. Much love and compassion is sent to each and every person who reads this.
Learn to love people and use things ... not love things and use people.
Anon
Beneficiary Of Compassion
by Robert Gupton
You have a problem that is hurting you. The problem is so large that you can't see a way out of it. You feel all alone because there is no one who seems to really understand what you’re going through. If only someone could actually feel what you’re experiencing, then maybe they could lovingly take your hand and help you climb out of your pit of misery.
If you could start by understanding that this feeling of being all alone with your torment is understood by someone, this could give you the first and most important feeling that you need now - hope.
Let’s start by understanding your pain by comparing it to a life threatening situation that could easily be understood by anyone who does not seem to care about your problem now.
It was a beautiful summer day at the lake and I decided to take a swim to refresh myself and feel the exhilaration that a long swim would give me. I felt so good that I swam further than I had planned. Suddenly a severe pain hit me that felt like a knife in my side. I started to struggle against the water as it seemed to pull me down and panic gripped me as I realized that I had a severe muscle cramp.
The water was no longer my friend, but an enemy that was going to take my life.
I cried out in total helplessness. I could not fight against this paralyzing pain - it was overwhelming me. So quickly was my life about to be taken from me that I screamed in utter horror, “Help”. No one seemed to hear my cries! I could see a great many people on the shore looking towards my direction as I thought to myself, “Why don't you help me?”
Finally, as I was thrashing around and screaming for help, a few people swam closer to me and yelled out, “Hey, what’s wrong?” “ Do you need some help?” I thought to myself, “Of course I need help. Can't you see that? Help me! I'm drowning!” At that time I could no longer scream out. I was totally helpless and knew I was going to die.
Again I heard more people yelling, “Swim this way!” “Keep your head above the water.” “Do you need a rope?” Advice and questions were not helping me. Why didn't they know how to help me? Couldn't they see I was drowning?
As my lungs filled with water and everything started to grow very dark, I felt something pull on my arm. Even though I was not aware of what was happening, I somehow sensed my body being pulled through the water. The next thing I remember was waking up coughing and vomiting violently, gasping for air that I could not feel.
But then I realized that I was alive and had been pulled out of the water by someone who did know what was happening to me.
As I looked up at the crowd of people who seemed to have nothing better to do than to gawk at my near tragedy, there was a friendly face holding me up by the back of my head saying, “I’m so glad I saw what was happening to you.
You had gone down and I almost lost you. It seemed like something led me right to you after you went down under the water. Are you all right? Is there anything I can do for you?” I remember that I started to laugh and cry at the same time thinking to myself, “This man just saved my life, and he is asking me if there is anything he can do for me. What more could anyone do for someone?”
I pulled my thoughts and composure together as I watched this person walk away after saying to me, “I’m so glad I was able to save you. Take care of yourself. Everything is going to be alright.” It was too late before I realized I didn't even ask him what is name was. No one else seemed to know him either. I never found out who this man was who saved my life and it’s been over ten years now.
The feeling of love and caring never left me and the gratitude stays with me overwhelming my heart.
Ever since that day all the problems that once plagued me and interfered with the pleasure of life seem so insignificant and unimportant. I am alive! If it wasn't for that day I never would have realized what I could have lost.
Someone did understand my problem.
Would it help you to have someone see things as you see them? Would it take away some of the pain to know that someone does care enough to feel your pain with you? There is an old expression that says, “Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.” I don't believe this was meant as advice but the reality of the inhumanity of humanity. It is a fact that most people seem to be saying, “I can't think about your problems because I've got problems of my own.”
But the fact is that the most effective way of getting rid of your problems is to help someone else with theirs. However, you do have to have some hope that will lift you up to this realization first. So, let’s establish some facts that will help you with your problem now.
There is cruelty in this world and there is also compassion. The cruelty is not the problem but it is the result of the problem. What is this great problem? The inability of people to care about themselves. Compassion may be thought of as the solution to the problem of cruelty but this is not so.
Compassion is the result of the solution to the problem. What is this great solution? The recognition of the fact that there is something that touches the inner most part of our being when someone proves to us that they care for us as much as they do for themselves.
When this happens something changes inside of us. We feel something we don't really understand. We feel the warmth and love of someone understanding and helping us, but unless it sinks deeper into our hearts, we remain the recipients of compassion only and not the beneficiaries.
To give compassion is to possess its true value.
However, it is necessary to first be the recipient of compassion before you become the beneficiary of it. You are the recipient of my compassion even though I do not know you or exactly what your pain is.
The wonderful caring feeling I have for you as you read this comes from something greater than my human expression.
Believe me, I feel your pain with you. I feel that I know you. I actually feel your thoughts, your fears, your doubts, your torment, your despair, your agony, and your hope. I am with you. You are not alone. There is part of life that connects us all together.
We can't really understand it, we can only be aware of it. If you accept this compassion, a new feeling of wanting to give what you have received takes over and you become the beneficiary of compassion.
Once hope is realized in your consciousness, you can start to rebuild what was torn down.
The rebuilding is done with a new awareness of adding what was missing in the beginning. As long as you have the inheritance of compassion, you will never again experience the devastating effects of being alone with a problem of any kind. You will have the awareness of that something which came into this world with you; that something that will live in your consciousness after your life on this earth passes on to a new plane of existence.
The time you have here in this world is important to everyone. There are many lives that need to be touched by your compassion. You are a very special person, filled with the awareness necessary to find your real purpose in this world.
So go out and find the answers to all the questions your new consciousness is asking. There is always someone to help you along the way. Let this be a new beginning for you. One filled with great expectance of the most spectacular and exhilarating life that could only belong to one so deserving as you. I am with you. God is with you.
Chicken Soup for the Veteran's Soul
There was this Hindu who saw a scorpion floundering around in the water. He decided to save it by stretching out his finger, but the scorpion stung him. The man still tried to get the scorpion out of the water, but the scorpion stung him again.
A man nearby told him to stop saving the scorpion that kept stinging him.
But the Hindu said: "It is the nature of the scorpion to sting. It is my nature to love. Why should I give up my nature to love just because it is the nature of the scorpion to sting?"
Don't give up loving.
Don't give up your goodness.
Even if people around you sting.
Anon
The Practice of Compassion
by Ven. Dr. Karuna Dharma
(Buddhism)The attainment of enlightenment in Buddhism is often characterized as a flying bird. In order to fly the bird must have two wings; so it is for the achievement of full enlightenment: one must have perfected both wisdom and compassion. Often we think of these two characteristics as being different. But in actuality, they are merely two aspects of the same attainment.
Compassion is the active form of wisdom. For if one has attained wisdom, one sees the innate unsatisfactoriness of things. One sees how suffering and unhappiness arise and how sentient beings are caught in this web of samsara, the continuous round of the arising, maturing and ceasing of existence. And when one sees others caught in duhkha, in suffering, in unsatisfactory conditions, one's compassion arises, for one has experienced this duhkha also, and knows the source of it. The understanding of the existence of suffering causes the arising of compassion, and the understanding of its source is the wisdom that must underlie compassionate action.
Wisdom is cultivated through the practice of meditation and ethical conduct. Compassion is cultivated with the practice of the six perfections: dana, selfless giving; ksanti, patience; and virya, spiritual effort; as well as sila, ethical conduct; dhyana, meditation; and prajna, intuitive wisdom. The cultivation of wisdom is the cultivation of compassion, and the cultivation of compassion is the cultivation of wisdom.
Dana, selfless giving, is the base of all Buddhist practice and the base of compassion. One can give material goods. One can give time and energy. One can give security, emotional refuge, or spiritual guidance. But one must give from a place of no self, as easily and as naturally as a mother gives milk to her infant. If the giver thinks, "I am giving to this poor wretch," that is poor giving. If one thinks, "I will attain merit from this giving," that is no giving at all.
Dana is giving which has no giver, no given and no receiver. It is an action that arises with no separation of subject and object. This non-separation of giver and receiver is not a metaphor. It is reality, for Buddhism does not see separate, innate beings of any kind. Rather, all beings are one and ultimately cannot be separated into individual personalities or separate existences.
Compassion is all embracing and non-discriminatory. It is given freely to all beings, just as the rain does not discriminate as to which plants and beings deserve its benefits. It just falls and nourishes all life. So, too, compassion arises without any ego thoughts, without any concepts, to all beings: human, animal, vegetable. All life forms benefit from it.
Compassion is not sentimental, nor particularly emotional. Since compassion necessitates an understanding of the source of suffering and the relief of suffering, wisdom must underlie and give impetus to any compassionate act.
If compassion does not grow from wisdom, then the action taken may cause much harm. Since compassion must help to end suffering, the compassionate being cannot be swayed by pity or by emotional appeals to give the sufferer something that does not ultimately help to relieve suffering.
A compassionate act does not enable the sufferer to continue behaviour which will only brings more suffering. Therefore, the wise person sees where the suffering arises, does what he can to help alleviate the suffering, and does not become morose or feel guilty when he cannot help.
In Mahayana Buddhism, compassion became idealized and embodied in the great spiritual heroes: the Bodhisattvas. These Bodhisattvas are greatly revered, for they exemplify total compassion. Although fully enlightened, and able to enter into the final Paranirvana, they remain in the world of samsara, in the realms of suffering, to help all beings, until all beings attain Nirvana.
At the same time, while the Bodhisattvas work to liberate all living beings, they do not perceive of themselves as saviours. Their compassionate acts flow freely from them, without reservation, without discrimination, for their very nature is compassion. It is this compassion that the sincere Buddhist tries to cultivate.
Why society needs to show compassion for the childless
Joyce McMillanBY COMMON consent, this has not been a good month for the monarchy; but despite record levels of public exasperation with the whole royal circus, there can still be few women, or sentient men, in Britain who have not felt a pang of sympathy this week over the unexpected ordeal faced by Sophie, Countess of Wessex.
The countess - who is 38, and lost a baby two years ago through an ectopic pregnancy - was due to have given birth to her first child in early December. But last Saturday night she was rushed into her local NHS hospital at Frimley Park in Surrey, where she underwent not only a Caesarean section to deliver her baby - a girl weighing less than 5lb - but a massive operation to stop internal bleeding that would otherwise have been fatal.
The baby was whisked away almost immediately to the nearest special care baby unit in South London. And for six days, until their happy reunion yesterday afternoon, there the two remained, Sophie too ill to be moved from Frimley Park, the baby too small to be released from special care; and both - one guesses - all the more sick and stressed for being 25 miles apart, at a time when separation is notoriously agonising.
Of course, there are questions, which will no doubt eventually be asked, about whether and how this almost unheard-of situation in modern childbirth could have been avoided. But behind that, there will also be a backbeat of less kindly questioning; about whether older couples like Sophie and Prince Edward are not increasingly pushing things too far in their determination to be parents, and failing, as it were, to take nature’s hint and call it a day.
It’s an argument that surfaces most often in the public debate about the funding of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), one of the most difficult of all the "wicked" resource issues facing the National Health Service in an age of booming medical technology.
On one hand, infertility is clearly not a life-threatening condition in the same literal sense as cancer or coronary disease. But on the other, unwilling childlessness can blight lives and destroy partnerships to the point where those involved truly wish themselves dead; and many of those on the front line of fertility treatment, who see the pain involved every day at close quarters, take the view that this is too fundamental a human need for a caring medical system to deny.
So before we rush to the conclusion that the current boom in late and assisted pregnancies is simply a sign of "selfishness", or of people who mistakenly believe in their "right" to have a child, I think it’s wise to consider the many reasons why remaining childless in our society is particularly painful, and perhaps, in some ways, more difficult than it has ever been.
Until three or four generations ago, for example, Britain, like most nations, had more children than it knew what to do with; and in those circumstances, those who managed to avoid the common lot of frequent childbearing were often envied, not only for their relative wealth and good health, but for a certain spiritual superiority conferred on them, in a sexually-repressed culture, by their apparent distance from the whole messy business.
This may not, of course, have been much private consolation to barren couples who longed for children of their own. But at least it gave them a certain public status; and if they were willing to raise someone else’s child, most families had a few orphaned or extra ones going spare, for informal fostering.
Nowadays, by contrast, babies are at a premium. If you don’t have your own, it’s increasingly difficult even to get a five-minute cuddle of one; and as for status - well, if there is an ultimate post-modern sin, it is surely failing, by the age of 40 or so, to do what we call "getting a life", by which we seem to mean acquiring a successful relationship, a home, and the prospect of a family.
In an age when both religious faith and collective identity were more important than they are today, people had many concepts of duty and worthwhile living to place alongside parenthood; the world, as we are constantly being told, was full of happy spinster aunts who spent their lives teaching Sunday School, knitting socks for the troops, and running the Women’s Institute.
But in a more individualistic world, there is no form of spinsterish activity that carries that kind of moral resonance, or holds out the same promise of a day-to-day loving relationship with a wider community. Today - as modern celebrity parents are constantly reminding the benighted childless - only parenthood can batter down the doors of self-absorption and selfishness, give you a passport to the life of your local community, and confer a full sense of connection with the rest of the human race.
Worse, unless you are some kind of mighty artist creating work of enduring importance, only parenthood confers a real sense of purpose in life, and of immortality beyond death.
OF COURSE, there is an element of whistling to keep the spirits up in some of these more extreme claims about parenthood; the costs of parenthood are now so high, in financial and practical terms, that there’s a natural need to "talk up" the positive aspects of the experience.
But as the Guardian writer Zoe Williams observed in a brilliant study a few weeks ago, there can never have been a generation of childless people so relentlessly battered by the idea that only parenthood makes us fully human. Only last Saturday, the usually brainy and sensible Emma Thompson was quoted, at the age of 44, saying that her three-year-old daughter taught her "everything there is to know about being human"; thereby implying both that she knew nothing about being human before her daughter’s birth, and that people who have not had a three-year-old daughter never will know anything about being human.
And this, I think, is the context in which we have to judge those who now strive mightily for parenthood against heavy odds, and who sometimes come to grief. Already there are signs that a younger generation of women, now in their twenties, are beginning to recognise that those who want to be parents should start relatively young; we are all still on a rapid learning-curve about the meaning of the new freedoms we have acquired in the last 40 years, and about how quickly, as we grow older, nature can whip away the choices technology seems to give us.
We can debate, in the long term, whether it is right or good for our children, that we should make them such a focus of meaning in otherwise self-centred lives.
But in the meantime, in the society we have made for ourselves, we can surely show some compassion for those caught in the rip-tide of history, as it sweeps over our reproductive and family lives; both those of us who, one way or another, have seen our chance of parenthood slip away for good; and those, too, who feel impelled to make that one last desperate dive for the only true fulfillment our culture knows, whatever the cost, and whatever the risks
source The Scotsman
15 Nov 2003If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
The Dalai Lama
The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion and constitutionality is no match with compassion.
Everett M Dirkson
The value of compassion cannot be over-emphasized. Anyone can criticize. It takes a true believer to be compassionate. No greater burden can be borne by an individual than to know no one cares or understands.
Arthur H. Stainback
I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it.
Thomas Aquinas
Make no judgments where you have no compassion.
Anonymous
The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion constitutionality is no match with compassion
Everett M. Dirksen
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
New York Journal
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Arnold Schopenhauer
By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also
Thomas Browne
The dew of compassion is a tear.
Lord Byron
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never willWilliam Cowper
Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.
Bhagavad Gita
Reason guides our attempt to understand the world about us. Both reason and compassion guide our efforts to apply that knowledge ethically, to understand other people, and have ethical relationships with other people.
Molleen Matsumura
Compassion is a two way street.
Frank Capra
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
George Washington Carver
It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding
Erma Bombeck
Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism
Hubert H. Humphrey
When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
Sogyal Rinpoche
It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked
Haile Selassie
It is lack of love for ourselves that inhibits our compassion toward others. If we make friends with ourselves, then there is no obstacle to opening our hearts and minds to others.
Anonymous
Wars begin in the minds of man, and in those minds, love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace
U Thant
C = Caring people have O = optimism and
M = mateship.
P = People and
A = animals
S = share in
S = some things that
I = indicate that they are not
O = only but ALWAYS thinking of other
N = nearly all the time everyday!
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