Pagan Values Blogging Month: Judgment vs. Compassion
Compassion: to feel with. In terms of human interactions, compassion is to allow yourself to not only feel for other people (sympathy) but to feel with other people (empathy). It is becoming an active participant in another person’s suffering. Or, if you want to take this beyond anthropocentrism, it is active participation in another being’s suffering. (It can also be applied to emotions other than those associated with suffering.)
Compassion, comparatively speaking, doesn’t get a lot of time in pagan discussion because it’s a “nice” emotion. Sometimes I feel that many neopagans are so afraid of being perceived as fluffy, frou-frou New Agers, prone to talking about “love and light”, that we create a front of cynicism and worldliness. We separate ourselves from those other people by seeming more serious, and denigrate the sensitivity that may be expressed by others. We think that because we aren’t just talking about The Secret and wrapping the entire planet in soft pink energy that we somehow have a more mature, developed way of approaching the world we live in. True, sometimes complex emotions are unnecessarily compressed down into 140-character sound bites on Twitter, and I could write a ton about how “the law of attraction” is stuffed full to overflowing with primarily white, middle-class privilege.
http://therioshamanism.com/2011/06/22/pagan-values-blogging-month-judgment-vs-compassion/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks for the link. Reminds me of, I feel with loving compassion the problems of others without getting too mixed up in the lesson life is trying to teach them. Or something like that. 
I forgot how you have nearly single-handedly kept this group alive for years.
I would love to have a whole weekend to peruse the gems you share. I'll gradually read as I can.
In the meantime, I want you to know how much I appreciate what you share here, there, and everywhere.
*fingers crossed*
