A process for developing personal compassion to engage in compassionate community for a more compassionate world

Welcome to Compassionate Sunday. We’re working through Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong, one step per month.

The month of March is devoted to The Second Step: Look at Your Own World. If you’d like to share a post about what you learned about compassion (The First Step) or what you’re seeing in your world, use the link list below or join the discussion in the comments or on Facebook.

Last week, we made an attempt to look at Trump supporters through a compassionate lens. Great discussion in the comments!

When I think about looking at my world from where I live in St. Louis County in 2016, Ferguson looms large. The Ferguson Commission completed its assigned work late last year. I know that it’s fashionable to be cynical about commissions, but I paid some attention to what they were doing and I was impressed by their process.

The Commission and their committees spent considerable time listening to the community. Then, they consulted experts. Then, they combined what they learned from both of those sources into a report with distinct and clear Calls to Action.

Any community who went through this process would get somewhat different results in the details. However, many of the problems that we’re dealing with in St. Louis are a result of a national history of racism, beginning with genocide and chattel slavery. So, the Ferguson Commission Report could serve as a blueprint for any community in the US — or, even, for the United States as a whole.

So, looking at my world, right now, means looking at and working with the Ferguson Commission Report. Here’s how you can do it, too.

Forward Through Ferguson. This is a modern, interactive, web version of the report. I enjoyed looking at it this way — but I suspect it helped that I’d seen a draft before I tackled it in this non-linear approach.

If a printable traditional report appeals to you more, that’s available, too: Ferguson Commission Report (pdf)

If both of those seem overwhelming, check out A Citizen’s Guide to Forward Through Ferguson with approaches that take as little as five minutes.

The Ferguson Commission decided not to consider their work done when they issued their final report. Forward Through Ferguson, besides being the title of the report, is also the name of a newly organized group that intends to oversee the implementation of the Calls to Action in the report.

Next week, for my final post on The Second Step: Look at Your Own World, I’ll identify specific Calls to Action in the Ferguson Commission Report that I intend to keep looking at in my world.

What are you looking at in your world? Does the Ferguson Commission Report have an insight or impact on that perspective?