A Spirituality of Compassion

Book Overview: "Do not let them forget Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.. Who in this waterless place brout you water from the hardest rock." (Det. 8: 14-15) Every place we turn today seems to confront us with startlin statistics, stories of struggle, and issues that threaten the qulaity of human life. There are mass movement of refugees, hostilities and threats on all levels of human interaction, loneliness, brokenness, and despair. These are all terrible human miseries filled with sordid and complex realities. It will take a spirituality of compassino to heal these multiple wounds in our personal and communal lives. This book is an invitation for you to consider living such a compassionate life. It is about calling upon groups and institutions to do so. Joan Puls illustrates in this her second book, the vision that all of life interpenetrates and connects. She sees that life is lived in constantly evolving experiences of "exchange" between the individuals and among communities of people. This "exchange" underlies an interdependence that is absolutely necessary and indispensable as a basis for healing, growing, and bonding. A Spirituality of Compassion invites your consideration of seven human situations and embodies them with examples. It is within the experience of displacement, love, community, forgiveness, healing, prayer, and hope that you can discover a spiritual opportunity to incarnate the gospel attitudes and responses of Jesus. It is within the dawning realization and experience of your own connectedness with others that you will find ways, as Moses did, to release the refreshing water of compassionate living upon those who thirst for it in this parched world.