Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

                                                                                                                            —Henri Nouwen

M

any of us think of compassionate care as somehow separate from the 

ordinariness of our day-to-day routines and view it as something that 

happens only in the end-stages of life. We have a vague notion that 

compassionate care is about affirmation, love and respect toward the ill and 

dying. And this is, of course, true. 

But most of us have not taken the time to sort it out well enough to understand 

compassionate care as a unifying spiritual principle that can support us and 

even lift us up if we bring it front and center into our lives as part of the present 

moment, long before we enter the last season of life. What happens if we try to 

“live” in compassion? To bring it to the forefront of our lives?

Henri Nouwen, professor, theologian and writer, in his definition of compas-

sion, says: 

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places  

of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. 

Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn 

with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion 

requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, 

and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion 

in the condition of being human.

Compassionate

Care

Life

Way

as a

of

Parthenia Kavita Hicks

20

Enlightenment Journal | Summer 2017