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.

If you’d like to share a post about what you learned about compassion (The First Step), what you’re seeing in your world (The Second Step), self-compassion (The Third Step), empathy (The Fourth Step), mindfulness (The Fifth Step), action (The Sixth Step), or how little we know (The Seventh Step) use the link list below. Or join the discussion in the comments or on Facebook.

Last week, I mentioned that I’d be “attending” the American Citizens Summit, a free on-line convention of people interested in working in transpartisan ways to make change in the US. I made daily posts about my experiences and thoughts:

• Signing up
• Opening Night, Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4 and summary

I got what I wanted from the summit (a tool for cross-divide conversations — see Day 4).

In the spirit of the Seventh Step, how little we know, I learned about a whole lot of organizations and efforts that I had no idea existed or would even have thought could exist. I heard stories about people who dropped their assumptions about others on the other side of a divide just long enough for a conversation and were surprised to discover how much they had in common.

Or, as Karen Armstrong put it:

Western society is highly opinionated. Our airwaves are clogged with talk shows, phone-ins, and debates in which people are encouraged to express their views on a wide variety of subjects. this freedom of speech is precious, of course, but do we always know what we are talking about?

During the American Citizens Summit, I heard of many instances where people allowed the possibility that they didn’t know as much as they thought they did. That opened up just enough space for amazing things to happen — enemies to become friends and solutions to become apparent.