"Compassion for the Children"
Reflections by Gerri Haynes
(Offered at St. Mark's Cathedral, at the conclusion of a prayer service and procession from St. James Cathedral attended by about 400 people, on Sunday, February 21, 1999.)
Blessings to all of you who walked here today and all who joined us at St. Mark's. Thank you for being here to witness to our common hope for relief of the sanctions.
Will Rogers wrote, "80% of life is just showing up" – thank you for showing up today – and knowing that we have work to do.
Today in Iraq, more children will die than our minds can hold. Today, if one of my children died, I would be grieved beyond tolerance. Iraq is full of grief – the grief of the worst pain a parent can know - Iraq is grieving the disaster of a child or children dying in every family today. Our compassion for this grief brought us to the streets and to St. Mark's.
Webster defines compassion as a sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it. Before the 1991 War in the Gulf, Archbishop Hunthausen called for all world leaders to be required to sit together and give to each other what he called a compassionate glance – believing that such an act would move the world closer to peace than the nuclear blackmail we presently employ. We gather here to offer to the children of Iraq compassion – a sympathetic consciousness of their distress with a desire to alleviate it.
We hear from UNICEF that 6000 children 5 years of age and under are dying every month of sanctions-related causes – that 200 of these babies are dying today, more than eight children each hour. This is not a natural disaster – this is a man-made disaster that must be stopped. When the lack of clean water and the resultant diarrheal diseases take life from these children, we must show up to do something about the water. When the lack of immunizations makes childhood diseases that were eradicated reappear in mass, we must show up to do something about the immunizations. When people are starving because their primary source of revenue to purchase food is damaged or destroyed by us, we must show up to do something about the food.
And the figure of 200 does not address the mothers, fathers, older sisters and brothers, uncles, aunts, grandparents dying every day. There are older Iraqi people dying of sanctions-related causes every day – members of our family – the universal family of men and women – and the world must grieve the deaths of these - the children of our family. So we gather also to offer these older "children" our compassion.
In this offering of compassion, we are awakened to the level of the pain in Iraq and the world - a pain that is so deep and wide it is hard to hold. A pain that can immobilize/paralyze – prevent us from speaking out, asserting our right to have this pain relieved - not only by compassionate glances but by fulfilling our desire to alleviate the cause of the pain. The pain can overwhelm us – we may seek to find someone to blame for the pain – we may become militant in our demand. Then, our only action may be the rhetoric of blame seeking. But when our energy is spent thusly, we have little to offer to those in need – those for whom we sorrow.
Look upon yourself with compassion – know that one soul can hold only so much pain and decide on the most loving and productive way to alleviate your pain. Let your compassion motivate you to work most efficiently toward pain relief for the people of Iraq. Blaming derails us. Discovery of cause and taking related action empowers us.
The kind of compassion that brought you here today has related actions. Write your compassion, speak your compassion, tell your elected leaders, the printed press, the radio and television press of this compassion and its need to be relieved by loving action toward the people of Iraq. As the human family is dying in Iraq, the entire world suffers for allowing these deaths to occur. Last year, Congressman Jim McDermott, showing up once again for a meeting of concerned citizens, said he believed nothing would be done to end the sanctions until hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to demand relief. Today, we have begun to answer that challenge.
Which brings me to a final note. Let's go back to our world leaders and contemplate Archbishop Hunthausen's idea – the idea of a compassionate glance. What if the leaders of the world could feel compassion from all of us – what if they were lifted up by that compassion – not placed each day in the frozen and uncreative posture of defensiveness? What if, in writing to and calling our leaders, we acknowledged the complexity of their roles and called, in compassion, for them to make their governmental decisions with the awareness that we hold them in care. What if compassion for the children was for all children – including our leaders?
As we are all an intimate part of the fabric of the spiritual universe, I offer to you this reading from a book given to me recently by Bert Sacks, a friend and the man who plucks the conscience of Seattle to end the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq:
"I have known you all my life and I have called you by many different names.
I have called you mother and father and child.
I have called you lover.
I have called you sun and flowers.
I have called you my heart.
But I never, until this moment,
called you, "Myself."