What’s Our Circle of Compassion?

I was sitting all the way at the other end of a large table from Delores in Champaign, Illinois, and I needed to do everything I could not to let the tears fall from my eyes. Here was a woman desperately struggling to keep her head above water in today’s economy and her acts of compassion were simply overwhelming to me. Throughout Main Street America, her story is not uncommon.

Over the course of our three-hour conversation, I learned about Delores and her life. I was in Champaign to talk with a cross-section of people for our new Citizens and Politics: A View from Main Street study we’re undertaking in conjunction with the Kettering Foundation.

Delores, a middle-aged, African-American, single mother is employed as a bus driver, where she earns less than $30,000 a year. And she is a Republican. Like so many Americans we’ve been talking with, Delores is doing all she can to make ends meet. And yet, all the talk of a “bad economy” in nightly news reports, findings from the latest public opinion surveys, and daily highlights of cold unemployment facts, sorely miss the point of people’s plight and aspirations. Indeed, many of the remedies being proposed to address people’s concerns seem utterly disconnected from what people are actually wrestling with.

For these issues are fundamentally about people and their lives, their hopes and what keeps them awake at night, their guts churning with anxiety. In 25 years of doing this work, I have never encountered such a time when people have been so rattled and scared about their future – where they talk so openly about their fear of losing a job, their family in free-fall as their earnings drop precipitously from $60,000 to below $30,000 and share their worries about not being able to hold onto their modest home, bought after many years of scraping together hard-earned dollars.

Delores and her fellow Illinoisans expressed frustration, even anger about the current situation. They believe the wealthy and powerful are taking care of themselves and have turned their backs on the rest of the country. They feel screwed, left behind, discarded. There is a sense of humanity that is being lost in this process–a sense of connection between and among people. In this abyss is a sense that we are no longer in the same boat together, part of something larger than ourselves.

But as strongly as Delores expressed such concerns, there was an equal fierceness about her compassion for others. Through the discussion, I came to learn Delores’ son has learning disabilities, and she’s concerned that the local school system is passing him from grade to grade without regard for whether he is actually learning anything. She expressed her concerns not by using politically correct language, or with a sense that she had been unduly burdened, but with a bluntness of acknowledging reality and the need to find the right support for her son. She discussed how she pushes and prods the local school system to create a good learning environment in which he can grow. Again, she did not speak about what she was owed or make arguments about her “rights” or ask for any hand-outs.

Then, amid this story, I learned that Delores had taken in a foster child, who she has now adopted, and of her love for this child. She matter-of-factly told stories about how she reaches out to others in the community to ensure they are making a go of things; about how people need to watch out for each others’ kids; about how we must care for the less fortunate among us.

On one level, Delores has little in material goods, but on another, so much in her heart.

What was so striking to me about her compassion, and that of many others, too, is not a kind of warm, cuddly, Hallmark-card like sentimental feeling one might expect, but a burning commitment to keep her dignity, to care about others, not to give in to larger currents that suggest one should turn away from others only to care for themselves.

One of our challenges today is to find ways to expand the circle of compassion within our communities and society if we, as a nation, are to move ahead. Delores is a reminder of what that really means. Despite the challenges that beset her, she has chosen to expand and embrace her circle.

Now, who are you including in your circle of compassion?

Delores’s story is the first in a series we are calling A View from Main Street which will feature stories of everyday Americans throughout the country. These stories will be featured together in a national study called Citizens and Politics II slated to be published later this year. You can read Citizens and Politics I here.

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A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people’s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We’re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.

Top image from Wikimedia Commons user: Ardfern.

I have been thinking a lot about how to make a difference in society and also stay true to yourself.  I write and speak on this topic a good deal, but in light of the recent storms in America’s heartland, the question of charity vs. change has been on my mind. There has always been a difference that has concerned me–oftentimes I think we get them confused. I still do; so I wanted to return to this topic amid the challenges we face.

For a very long time I have always sought to speak out on significant difference between charity and change. Charity is ensuring someone has a meal tonight or roof over their head, things that folks in the wake of a natural disaster very much need. All things I suspect we agree are good things to do. But the problem is when we come to believe that such charity is a substitute for change–in fact, that it IS change.

I remember very clearly hearing on the radio a segment of a National Press Club talk given by Reverend David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, who was talking about how to end hunger in the U.S. At one point, he made a passionate riff about how Moses and Jesus and the prophets all were fundamentally calling for changes in structures, laws, and beliefs, among other things. Yes, they wanted people to help the less fortunate; there’s much written about that in religious and other belief systems. But, they also said that only through basic changes in underlying conditions in society, would the world be different.

Beckmann was asked if he thought there was a “compassion gap” in the U.S., had people become so fatigued by national and world disasters and assorted other events that they were no longer willing to engage or even pay attention. He emphatically said “No” – while there is a lack of confidence in our ability to act effectively on challenges, people still “care.”

I agree with him. Every indicator I see in my work and travels is that people still do care about others and deeply so. But caring and what we do are two very different things. We have created all sorts of mechanisms that enable people to marshal in the short term financial and other resources to express our individual and collective compassion for victims of natural disasters and to respond to people’s immediate needs. We can make donations through instant text messages, directly support charities online and bypass “middle men,” and rally around a cause through instant mobilization efforts. But is that enough?

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Every indicator I see in my work and travels is that people still do care about others and deeply so. But caring and what we do are two very different things.

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At a Craigslist Boot Camp, where I once spoke, I was taken to task for not promoting “fast and easy” volunteer actions people can take, whether they be donations or other activities like reading a book to a kid. Statements about such “fast and easy” actions were a mantra at the event. My own response was that the actions people take can be viewed along a continuum–say, from something fast and easy to something deeper and more sustained over time.

But I also said that we must not confuse fast and easy such actions with fundamental change, that our purpose and actions must be aligned. To create change, as Beckmann was pointing out, we must get at fundamental structures, policies, laws, norms, relationships. Yes, charitable acts can contribute to such change, but they do not get us there.

I suppose I am writing about this topic today because at no other point in my own lifetime can I remember when charity was more needed at home and abroad. So I find there is a pull within me to hold back a bit on drawing such a sharp distinction between charity and change. I know we need charity and we must give. And yet, what I also know is that the need for change–real, fundamental, basic transformation–is desperately needed today. We are in a new time, guided by too many old reflexes and approaches. We need to act on both charity and change, but let us be clear aware of when which response is called for when.

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A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people’s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We’re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.