The Dilemma of Compassion

Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins. ~ Native American (Cheyenne) proverb

The man came to my parsonage door in late afternoon. He hesitated when I invited him into my study, as though he was “unclean.” He didn’t appear to be unclean. He was dressed as most of the people in southern Indiana dressed: jeans and a windbreaker, athletic shoes. Yet, he hesitated to sit even when I invited him to do so. Thus we both remained standing.

“I just came back home from Denver. I live with my sister and brother-in-law up the road,” he said.

I nodded and waited for him to continue. He looked at his shoes.

After a minute or two he said, “I have AIDS. I’ve come home to die.” He looked into my eyes.

“Please…sit down,” I said.

He did and he told me his story. He said that he had been living away from the area for fifteen or so years, in Denver. When he and his partner had been informed that each had AIDS, they had decided to die together. (This was in the late 1980s, back in the days when AIDS was an inevitable death sentence, before AIDS “cocktail” therapy had been developed). After the death of his partner, he had returned to southern Indiana, where his sister still lived, so that he would not die alone.

“They are afraid of me,” he said, referring to his sister and her husband. “They don’t really want me in their house. For days now I have been looking at my brother-in-law’s shotgun, thinking that I need to end my life now.”

“I’m glad you haven’t,” I said. “What brought you to me?”

“I have no one I can talk to. This morning I walked here to Cannelton. I tried to talk with people, but I couldn’t. I was afraid they would turn away from me. The woman at the dinner up the street seemed nice. I tried to tell her about me… She said I should come to you. She said that you would understand. I have been walking around your church and house for hours, trying to find the courage to knock on your door, to say those words…You know, that I have AIDS.”

We talked for quite a while, this young man and me. He said that in Denver there was a support group that he and his partner had attended. He could find none here in Perry County, Indiana. I made a couple of telephone calls and located an AIDS support group in Owensboro, Kentucky, about twenty-seven miles away. Then we spoke about his thoughts of suicide.

“I know I am dying,” he said. “I don’t want to die alone. But my sister…she doesn’t understand. She and her husband are so afraid that I will give them AIDS. If I kill myself, it will be better for her.”

I offered to speak with his sister and brother-in-law, but he refused. I suggested he enter a hospital where his suicidal thoughts could be treated. Eventually he agreed and I contacted the social worker at the county hospital, who suggested I contact the hospital in Owensboro that had the necessary resources. I did and the young man made arrangements for voluntary admission. I offered to drive him to Owensboro, which he accepted.

When we arrived at the hospital and after admission was set up, I said good-bye to the young man and hugged him. The hug lasted a long time. When we separated, tears were running down his cheeks.

He said, “You are the only person who has ever hugged me after I have told them that I have AIDS.”

I had not walked in his shoes. I did not have AIDS. But I do have my own wounds, my own pains, my own suffering. It was through my own woundedness that I was able to show compassion for this stranger.

Yet, so often we seek to hide our wounds, even though they may be festering and obvious to others. Or, we may obsess on our woundedness, allowing our wounds to taint our view of life. To me, neither is acceptable. What is suitable is to show compassion and minister to others through and in spite of our wounds.

Henri Nouwen told an ancient Jewish parable of the return of the Messiah, who could be found sitting at the city gate. The Messiah, the story tells us, is sitting among the poor, binding his/her wounds one at a time, waiting for the moment when he/she will be needed. The Messiah is the wounded healer, the one who must look after his/her wounds and at the same time be prepared to heal the wounds of others.

Nouwen also wrote:

We are all wounded people. Who wounds us? Often those whom we love and those who love us. When we feel rejected, abandoned, abused, manipulated, or violated, it is mostly by people very close to us: our parents, our friends, our spouses, our lovers, our children, our neighbors, our teachers, our pastors. Those who love us wound us too. That’s the tragedy of our lives. This is what makes forgiveness from the heart so difficult. It is precisely our hearts that are wounded. We cry out, “You, who I expected to be there for me, you have abandoned me. How can I ever forgive you for that?”

Forgiveness often seems impossible, but nothing is impossible for God. The God who lives within us will give us the grace to go beyond our wounded selves and say, “In the Name of God you are forgiven." Let’s pray for that grace. ~ Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

And

For a Christian, Jesus is the man in whom it has indeed become manifest that revolution and conversion cannot be separated in man's search for experiential transcendence. His appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross. Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel. In this sense he also remains for nuclear man the way to liberation and freedom. . ~ Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer