Compassion is the heart of it all...

Ever since reading Karen Armstrong's The History of God, I have been exploring the ways that compassion is at the heart of my tradition as a follower of Jesus: not doctrine, not creed and not dogma, but compassion.
Compassion is how I have experienced grace, it is what drives my prayers on the inward as well as outward journey and compassion grounds me and urges me toward forgiveness and expressions of joy and awe in worship. To be sure, some believers revel in theology - and I both enjoy and benefit from the work of the mind - others celebrate the contemplative life in spades - and I am nourished here, too - to say nothing of our commitment to peace and justice.

But nothing is as complete to me as compassion.

The Charter for Compassion puts it like this:
The Golden Rule requires that we use empathy -- moral imagination -- to put ourselves in others' shoes. We should act toward them as we would want them to act toward us. We should refuse, under any circumstance, to carry out actions which would cause them harm.

For more information, go to: http://charterforcompassion.org/learn/talks