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New on the Resilience Blog
Ways to Channel Compassion in the Face of Suffering
 When someone we know is suffering, one of the most profound gifts we can offer is our presence.
Yet it can be hard to know exactly how to respond. Most of us have never been taught how. And truth be told, it can feel easier to step back, walling in our own feelings, than to engage with the effects of illness, loss, hardship or the untold sorrows a person may be enduring.
Still, we may feel a heart-tug or have our own nagging thoughts that we could do something. We just don’t know what. Is there a process that might help us proceed with wisdom and compassion? Especially when we’re not sure what that “something” is?
Singapore
By Mary Oliver
In Singapore, in the airport,
a darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women's restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something in the white bowl.
Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.
A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that's not possible, a fountain rising and
falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.
When the woman turned I could not answer her face.
Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and
neither could win.
She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?
Everybody needs a job.
Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.
But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,
which is dull enough.
she is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as
hubcaps, with a blue rag.
Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.
She does not work slowly, nor quickly, but like a river.
Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.
I don't doubt for a moment that she loves her life.
And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop and
fly down to the river.
This probably won't happen.
But maybe it will.
If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?
Of course, it isn't.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only
the light that can shine out of a life. I mean
the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,
the way her smile was only for my sake; I mean
the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.
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