Compassion (Part 1)

My thoughtful wife gave me a book called Compassion by Nouwen, McNeill, and Morrison for Christmas this year and I want to share my thoughts on the first twenty pages or so. I decided to start underlining some in this book on the advice of an older man. He said that with the proliferation of digital readers, our home libraries will no longer be repositories of our thoughts for future generations since theses machines seem to wear out faster than the leaves of our dusty old books. But here I am leaving my thoughts in cyberspace.

Several quotes from the book on the idea that competition is the opposite of compassion: 
"Our whole self is dependent upon the way we compare ourselves with others and upon the differences we can identify."

"This all-pervasive competition, which reaches into the smallest corners of our relationships, prevents us from entering into full solidarity with each other, and stands in the way of our becoming compassionate."

"Jesus requires us to unmask the illusion of our competive selfhood, to give up clinging to our imaginary distinctions as sources of identity, and to be taken up completely into intimacy with God. This is the mystery of the Christian life: to receive a new self, a new identity, which depends not on what we can achieve, but on what we are willing to receive."

Medicine is centered around power.  Most of my relationships growing up were about who had the power.  Marriage is often portrayed as a struggle for control.  Many parents see their relationship with their children as a power struggle.  Politics is power brokerage writ large.  Thinking how to relate to the world without competition strains the imagination. The way out of this paradigm of having to win is seeing our identity not in our imaginary distinctions but in being able to find a place of identity that is not as frail as ours.  The imagery of rebirth in the new testament (appropriate for this time of year)  is the entrance into a new world where compassion is the new modus operandi and solidarity is preeminent.  I hope my New Year is characterized by compassion- the ability to see others as more important than myself.