What would it mean if we led with compassion? This is what I’m chewing on this weekend. By led I’m not referring to showing the way, guiding by example or escorting others. I’m talking about how we present ourselves, how we step out each morning, encounter others. What if our first face, our first look, thought, consideration, response, action were one of deep sympathy, as if to say, “I don’t know the specifics of your pain, your suffering, your fear, longing, dilemma, secret sadness, deep yearning, greatest hope, but I can relate. I know the lay of the land you trod, that you are trying to negotiate. I’m human, too. I too have stumbled and tumbled and tumble from time to time still. I know how hard and unforgiving the ground can be when it decides to teach you a lesson, do more than hold you up. I know the bad look of the limp. I too, at times, limp and lean to one side unconsciously favoring an old wound, trying to compensate for some aspect of my person that is as of now not fully healed. I too find ways to hide my pain, my brokenness, my on-the-wayness and unfinishedness. Oh sweet imperfection!”

All of us limp some, or try our damnedest not to, hoping no one notices the hitch in our stride, that gimp in our gait, like Jacob whose blessing comes not from weakness, but from his tenacity, his refusal to let go, pulling on the invisible leg of the night angel, the agent of Holiness, the maker of Wholeness, the empath of Blessing. If we are honest, aren’t we all comb-overs, disguise artists, masters of distraction, saying suddenly and loudly “Oh, look!” as we turn and point so the other will look in that direction and perhaps give us time to readjust our mask or zip up our fly or cover up some as-yet-to-be healed flaw or some no-longer-blue-bruise that still hurts at the touch even though it came courtesy of a fall so long ago?

What if we led with compassion, deep sympathy, showed our passport to say without words, “I am a traveler, too.” Don’t we all have our various forms of armor that might offend the eye of the other as much as if they saw the part of us we long ago labeled “Defective” and are hiding. Don’t we all have our many jives and jukes to deflect the assessing eyes of the other, our personal “Oh! Look!” and diverting points? This one puts on pounds. That one puts on an act. This one stays frazzled and busy. That one views everyone as a competitor, a critic, another conquest. You hide the bottle under the old sheets in the back of the bathroom’s bottom shelf and drink when everyone has left the house, though it’s still not noon. He laughs when things are not funny to fortify himself from the fear he fears: that if he is too courteous to the far-off tears he suspects are coming when he let’s his guard down that he may not ever be be able to stop sobbing or outrun the tsunami. She works and works and works and convinces herself it is for her family even though her deepest pain is her now gone mother who was always gone, always AWOL, and she herself always left feeling absent, alone, unworthy, and missing. He goes through relationships like a poker player goes through chips holding his cards away from his chest convincing himself it’s just a game. You skip along the water’s face to put off that last little rocky hop when even a flat stone sinks to the bottom where it will need to be still in the quiet depths. You list shopping on your eHarmony page under Interests as if it were just another hobby like birding or baking or gardening as your garage fills with boxes that have yet to be opened. He judges people for a living, though not in any court, but in his heart to avoid the leveling weight of his own self-condemnation.

So what if it wasn’t an ancient sage, a Greek philosopher, a golden-oldie lover of wisdom like Plato or Philo but most likely a Scottish minister named Watkins from the late 1800’s who said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting some great battle.” Even he used a pen name. Aren’t we all pseudonyms of sorts? Perhaps, if we met there, in the town square where kindness and compassion and deep sympathy and mercy gather, meet, and greet the unfinished, the as-yet-to-be determined, the works-in-progress we all would be less apt to hide our sores and we could discover with each other’s support what was really hurting or harming or bothering us.

There is a legend dating back to the Talmud and particularly appreciated within the Jewish mystical tradition that tells of the Lamed-vav(nik). According to the legend, in any given generation, there are 36 righteous individuals, also called “the concealed ones,” living anonymously throughout the world and in our midst who are responsible for the fate of humanity who unknowingly depend upon the righteousness of these individuals for sustaining the universe and keeping it from disappearing into oblivion. But the Lamed-vav are not merely unknown to the world’s people. They are unknown to themselves as well. No one knows if he or she is a Lamed-vav. No one knows if they are married to one, or if they are the child or friend or neighbor or workmate of one. Only God knows.

Yet, the Lamed-Vav are responsible for the continuation, the well-being, the flourishing of the universe. They sustain life by being acutely aware of the presence of suffering, and by responding compassionately wherever and whenever they find it, but not to save the world, to keep it going, for they are unaware of their unique role within the collective power to do so. They are compassionate because they are concerned about others. They are moved by human and other-than-human anguish and therefore move to eliminate it, to sidle up alongside it, to be together with the other where it hurts, to offer the balm of deep sympathy, human kindness.

And here’s the thing that one awakens to when hearing the story of the Lamed-vav if the listener is truly listening and awake and concerned: If the number of the righteous ones ever dips below 36, the world will come to a disastrous, tragic, and sudden end. So, within and among concerned, enlivened ones arises the burning question with the grace and gravity of holy curiosity: Am I one of the Lamed-vav? What if I am a Lamed-vav? What if I am one of the 36, but fail to do my part, neglect to commit myself to compassionate action and risk the number falling below 36?

And here’s the other thing that hopefully is awakened in those who learn of the legend of the 36 righteous ones on whose living ways (not Atlas’s shoulders) the heft of the earth and the weight of the world are held up: we don’t know who among us to thank, who among us might be one of the Lamed-vav to be grateful to or to reciprocate for sustaining us and allowing us to experience the delight and goodness and beauty and joy and friendship and love of living on this resplendent earth and to share with others the incomprehensible surprise of living that comes to us by way of the superfluousness of God’s love. Whom do we thank? How do we show our gratitude to them for gifting us with the opportunity to participate in the extravagant love of the One in whom we live and move and have our being? How can we show our appreciation for the chance to dance the liturgy of life if we don’t know who they are?

I guess we will have to see ourselves in them and recognize them in ourselves. I guess we will need to lead with kindness and deep sympathy, with mercy and compassion, treating each and every one as if they might be holding and hiding either a secret burden, wound, difficulty, or perhaps one thirty-sixth the responsibility for this planet of promise and pain, sorrow and joy, life and death and life.

ARTWORK: “Connections,” 2016 by Margie Sheppard. For more about Margie and her art click HERE.

Goodpeople, please consider passing on THE ALMOND TREE to others, then do so. I appreciate it. ~ Dan

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