By Atit Marmer

My entire life has been committed to learning and understanding the giving and receiving of compassion. My first memory of an event involving this spiritual path goes way back to the sixth grade when our class visited a student art show presented by a school situated in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I grew up.

I felt the pain and resilience of the students, many of whom were my age, and I instinctively reached out to a number of them, talking and laughing with them, sharing in their joy at the display of their talents. Little did I know then that my calling in life as a therapist was to stand in the gap with all who have been in my resonance; the gap between the chaotic experiences of life and the joy of discovering our true nature. Nothing I could have articulated then, but something I intuitively knew.

 Submitted by What's Good 206

If you let a community tell its own stories, what do you hear?

During Seattle's Compassion Games, independent filmmakers brought us stories of a neighborhood coming together around a community garden, a community formed around an all-night diner, and a community of dancers that became family for a Seattle newcomer.

 Submitted by What’s Good 206

By Martha Hopler

As I head to the home of J. I feel a sense of urgency today is the day.  Today is the day I have waited for, for some time.  I have waited for the moment she is ready to head to re-hab.  I am very aware of the choices I have made to allow her to continue to care for her children while she chooses  to use drugs and alcohol to escape the realities of her difficult life.

As the social worker I live in the ever present tension of what is right for her kids and what she wants….  She on her own has finally said, “Yes I will go.”

 Submitted by Kizzie Funkhouser

We are fellow volunteers that serve those in need,

Farmers of hope, we're planting the seeds -

By Lee Campbell

There was a man named Joe Earl. He was born in 1911 in a small town near the Mississippi River. His father died of an unspecified illness when he was a toddler. His mother, Mollie Bodi, remarried and  had two daughters, Ida Mae and Delores. Mollie’s second husband died in an accident in a Missouri mine. She married a third time to a man whose last name was Dockins and had four more daughters. In approximately 1925, she died while giving birth to a baby boy. After her death, Mr. Dockins took the eight children from Missouri to California where he had relatives. When he reached California he took the eight children to various family member of his, parceled them out and disappeared.

The eight children were not happy in their new homes and they were not happy being separated from one another. After they struggled in their new environment for many months, possibly as long as a year, Joe, then 15-years-old, went around to all the children and said, "You Dockins children have to stay here in California because these are your relatives, but I am taking Ida Mae and Delores with me and we are going back to Missouri."

.

Submitted by What's Good 206

Why should you care about gun violence?

Submitted by What's Good 206

Start treating students respectfully and invite them into the conversation about their education, says a 17-year-old high school senior who has written a book advocating overhaul of the educational system.

In this video produced by What's Good 206, Nikhil Goyal also talks about how to make youth more compassionate toward one another -- multi-age group classrooms and integrated schools are two good places to start, he says.

By Alanna Gunne

Lying in his bed, he listened to the sounds of life.  He could smell the pot roast cooking in the kitchen and hear his housemates moving through the halls.  A movie was playing on his VCR and he was comfortable.  He had not envisioned his life this way.  He loved the beach and the sunshine.  He loved his work and his many friends knew him as a passionate foodie.  Assisted by his pain medications, he often dreamed of those days.  In a way it was a gift because he could live in whichever memory he chose – and he chose the best ones every time.

Chris Hawkins was pretty sure he would not live much longer – although over the years he had entertained this possibility countless times and still – here he was.  Thinking of ‘life’ he sometimes counted off the living that he could no longer accomplish.  First of all, he was blind – so he could no longer watch his beloved movies or see the smiles on his friends’ faces.  His frame was skeletal and he could no longer walk.  His kidneys were shutting down so his ‘big day out’ was going to the clinic for dialysis.  All of his physical and social needs were supported by the staff and volunteers at Rosehedge – his home for 14 years.

Submitted by What's Good 206

It was a chance encounter with a homeless man that that led University of Washington student Daniel Nguyen to start Operation Compassion last year.

It began when an apparently homeless man, a regular Daniel had seen for weeks, boarded his bus and asked him for spare change. Like many of us, Daniel's first response was, "I don't have any."

 By Joel and Michelle Levey

Some years ago, we were invited to offer a workshop on meditation and medicine for the faculty of University of Washington Medical School. Nearly 70 physicians attended and stayed for the whole five-hour workshop.

We were so touched by their sincerity and wish to learn more about profoundly practical methods drawn from the contemplative sciences that we began to host a monthly “Meditation and Medicine Circle” for physicians, nurses, and other health caring professionals who were interested in learning methods that would ease their stress, deepen their wisdom, expand their compassion, and offer useful skills to teach to their patients to help with their healing journeys.

By Amber Joy

Terry was not a complainer. He slept outside, did odd jobs for several Fremont businesses and was always willing to help with anything.

He came into ROAR, a day center for homeless men, almost daily, for a sack lunch. He would ask if he could do anything for us. He kept his hair short, getting it shaved off when he could... so much easier to keep clean, always a problem on the streets, this business of keeping clean. When I realized that I could cut hair for our clients I brought in my clippers and scissors and told the guys they had to shampoo their hair and then I'd give them a free haircut. Terry, amongst others, would make appointments for the day after they'd managed to find a shower... maybe at the Urban Rest Stop. They had to coordinate this with the days and hours that we were open.

By Dee Williams

Many people are studying compassion in order to introduce it into schools and other places. Some say it should be taught. Others have won awards for their programs that teach about compassion. Cities are touted as being the most compassionate. I guess this might be similar to the idea that “a corporation is a person”. Are we really ready to get serious about compassion? Even just saying the word may evoke a spark of “something” for you or me. I know that when I say or see the word it is as if I know it “compassion” intuitively.

My first impression about compassion was during my childhood when my pet hamster died. It was a sad time for me. But my friends and I decided to give the hamster a funeral. It was as if everyone came together to share my grief and help me get through that period of pain. I don’t recall that anyone laughed at the idea. I just remember that ceremony was just what I needed at the time.

Some painted walls, others cleaned a preschool inside and out. Others pulled yard cleanup duty. All told, there were more than 12,000 of them -- people who came out on Sept. 21, United Way of King County's biggest ever Day of Caring.

• Total volunteers: 12,122
• Total companies represented: 138
• Total projects completed: 448
• Total hours of labor: 59,737
• Total value of work: $1.3 million

Once upon a time there was a dog named Raider…

By Joel Levey

We were touched when a couple of our friends/students offered to come over and help us trim a tree with vines that was hanging dangerously over our neighbors' power lines.  

They brought over their ladders and saws, we shared some chocolate and music with them and after a few hours had managed to trim the tree and remove the danger of our neighbors' electricity being cut during an wind or ice storm.   I was very grateful and relieved!  While we were working on the project, I talked with a neighbor who I hadn’t seen for a while and who I had wondered about, with some concern if she was okay.

Story and photos by Tara Clark

After living in a small, remote village called Lesotho, in southern Africa, as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1990s, I continued to travel off the beaten path to far corners of the world to Haiti, the South Sudan, Laos, Mozambique and beyond.

Travel was my passion in life. But unlike many people, I did not travel to see the “wonders” of the world.” Instead, I traveled to meet and photograph the wonderful people of the world.

By Rita Hibbard

Bob Levine is research psychologist who studies cities worldwide, investigating just how helpful inhabitants are to strangers.

Eric Weiner is a former NPR foreign correspondent who traveled to the world’s happiest places to recover from a job that sent him to the world’s most miserable locales.

Admit it. That voice inside your head is often your most scathing critic.

Treating yourself with care and understanding rather than harsh judgment, seeing your own experience as part of a larger human experience, and avoiding the extremes of suppressing or running away from painful feelings, are all elements of self-compassion, says Kristin Neff, associate professor and researcher at the University of Texas at Austin.

Her website features a 26-question self-compassion scale, and a variety of resources, including exercises to increase self-compassion.

If Charles Darwin and the Dalai Lama could chat, they would agree on why humans are compassionate, psychologist Paul Eckman says. "We are compelled to relieve the sufferings of another, in order that our own painful feelings may be at the same time relieved," Darwin wrote.

The Dalai Lama says "the seed of compassion" is the discomfort we experience when we see someone suffering. "We are thus impelled to relieve the suffering of another so that our own painful suffering may be relieved."

 By Rita Hibbard

Compassion can take many different forms, but at its root it involves understanding the suffering of others and taking steps to alleviate it.

by Tom Williams

Right: Tom Williams and son at the “I Have a Dream” marker

Editor’s note: This is the text of a presentation made at the Louisville Intergovernmental Black History Committee in Louisville, Kentucky USA on January 13, 2004 by attorney Tom Williams. Tom’s comments illustrate the evolution of the response to hatred toward a more compassionate and workable form of engagement.

com • pas • sion (n)— a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

There’s some confusion about just what compassion is. I was recently at a gathering where compassionate action was being discussed with intensity and seriousness. I noticed that some of the ideas for compassionate action included “continuing the conversation,” “being sure to make eye contact with others,” “creating green spaces,” “carpooling,” “being courteous,” “getting involved in the political process,” and other recommendations that were certainly valuable but that were not examples of compassion in action.

Being nice, a good citizen, thoughtful, friendly, honest, authentic, environmentally sensitive, good parents, et al. are important. They aren’t acts of compassion. To be compassionate is to enter into the world of one who is suffering: to intimately know the pain of deprivation, loss, despair, doubt, humiliation, injustice, violence, the looming possibility of death, and the landscape of unbearable sorrow. Compassion means feeling someone’s pain and committing fully to doing something about it.