Times Three

"Compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share with you."

"That's why it's so important. It separates us from them."

~~ from Batman Begins

Verification came in threes for me this week. A movie. A book. A lecture.

Forced into a situation where compassion was the hard road to take, I felt deep in my soul that any road besides would ultimately be worse.

Compassion is easy to know when lovingkindess is all around, when humility, ability, and gratitude accompany need.

But in the face of human evil - yes, evil - compassion can become less a calculation, a simple obligation, a societal trophy, or a natural reaction to innocent need, and more a test of courage, of ethics, of conviction, of personal integrity, and mostly of comprehension.

Compassion struggling to flicker amidst the dank, black fury of what is unholy - and continuing to burn, however faintly - does more than survive, it proves.

I always thought that compassion was a natural reaction to hurt, need, tragedy. Now I realize that yes, most of the time it is that. But, too, there is compassion that must be discovered in a place of deepest contemplation, soul-searching. Measured against the spirit and the temporal this conviction takes not the easy way but the hard.

When those few point and sneer, slander and scheme, still the listening heart knows there is more, so much more than the acceptance of mere human beings.

There is understanding.

For all have sinned.

All.