The way of compassion is truly beyond seeing love as a duty, an attitude we “should” have, but simply and radically a new way of being in the world, a new way of (freely) relating. The conversion that is called for is an awakening to our true self, our true home. Such a conversion is essentially imaginative: being captured by an image of God that is worthy of our love and attention. Beyond niceness or kindness even, this is a truly revelatory and transformative way of being; reflecting or revealing who God is.
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When compassion for the afflicted is really found we have a more astounding miracle than walking on the water, healing the sick, or even raising the dead.
Simone Weil
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Compassion does not, of course, mean to feel pity and to condescend, but to feel with.
Karen Armstrong
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Radical compassion, in which an individual puts his own life at risk in order to help another, points to a truth about humankind as being fundamentally oriented to the other, which is simultaneously a truth which God has revealed about himself.
Oliver Davies
The truth about God is that God is fundamentally oriented towards the other.
This is who God is for us.
Communion, or community, is not about like-mindedness, but thrives on difference and otherness.
| Raimond Gaita, the Australian philosopher, says that love is the name we give to that behaviour which has the power to reveal the full humanity of those whose affliction has rendered them invisible. | Who do you find it difficult to see, really see and hear? There will be people in your family and circle of acquaintances… but there are also others: a refugee, a drunk, a homeless person… |
| Ian McEwan, the novelist says: “Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality. ” Imagination is a wonderful dimension to intercessory prayer. | Begin with someone you know and love – and who is perhaps ill. Take time and imagine her… what it would be like in her place… in time you could move on to people you hardly know – or don’t even like. |
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for our friends.
John 15:13
The images in this post are of the sculpture The Angel of the North, situated adjacent to a motorway near Gateshead in Great Britain, on the site of a disused colliery. The enormous figure of the angel, made of steel, bridges the earth and the sky, the wings tilted forward to give a sense of an embrace.
The artist, Antony Gormley says of his work, “People are always asking, why an angel? The only response I can give is that no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them. Is it possible to make a work with purpose in a time that demands doubt? I wanted to make an object that would be a focus of hope at a painful time of transition for the people of the North East, abandoned in the gap between the industrial and the information ages.”
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There is a smaller model of the angel in the Sculpture Garden on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra. Rooted to the ground via its plinth in the Sculpture Garden, on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin, the angel stands isolated, alert and sentinel-like, its rich rust-coloured surface changing in the Canberra sunlight.
Associations of crucifixion and rebirth add another layer to the dense iconography. Subtle gestures, such as the gentle angle of the wings, imply embrace and provide an overall sense of space. The lack of individual features gives the angel an air of mystery; as the artist suggests, we make things ‘because they cannot be said’.
For more information on The Angel of the North in Gateshead, Great Britain go to https://www.gateshead.gov.uk/article/5303/The-history-of-the-Angel-of-the-North
For more information about the angel in Canberra go to https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?IRN=191980
For a printable PDF of the text of this reflection click on the link below.
