Heart-Breaking Reality | August 2, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton
- The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples
- 11 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Please Lord…Kumbaya…Come By Here. Be with us today as we wrestle with the urgency of the heart-breaking reality of now.
I sat with a client this week who has been experiencing many life challenges…many, what she called a heart-breaking reality. She told me that as she experienced this heartbreak on so many levels, she realized that she was accessing a different part of herself… and she was responding to the world around her with more and more empathy or compassion. She said that when she saw a man asking for help outside of the grocery store, tears welled up in her eyes. She also said just watching a mother struggling to care for her children made her cry. I realized from her comments that this is perhaps one of the results of a heart breaking…it might break into a hardened heart…one that had been closed off to the pain of the world.
Matthew Fox says that compassion is everywhere and that we need compassion more than ever…for survival’s sake. He wrote a whole book on compassion back in 1979, the subtitle of which was Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice. He also said that compassion is…about doing and relieving the pain of others…straight from the words of John in the first epistle. He also says that injustice is a prime enemy of compassion and that compassion…frees us from too privatized a way of feeling and acting. If compassion is the enemy of injustice, then our present time is right (I would argue, long overdue) for developing it. I got some inspiration recently, not only from my client, but from James Baldwin in the following clip:
Baldwin says:
There may not be as much humanity in the world that we would like to see…but there is some. There’s more than one might think.
I am so encouraged by this! Baldwin, after everything he endured in life, is hopeful (at least in this clip). And this was in his time, not this present time. Not that his was a better time, but it was different. There was still the hope that we could get back to some ideals…some humanity…some humanness…or more broadly some idea of our origins as children of the creator that are in this together. He continues:
The world is held together, really it is, held together by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down any street of any city, any afternoon and look around you.
(This is what my client did.)
What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also you…you could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself not to be.
Baldwin is speaking to the sense of compassion that my client spoke of…the love and passion pouring out of that broken spot in our hearts…perhaps it is the love that from our birth over and around us lies.
For the beauty of the earth
For the beauty of the skies
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies
Source of all, to thee we raise
This our hymn of joyful praise
Baldwin says that we are also looking at ourselves when we see others. We are, as so many of our teachers say, all one…when we look at another, we are seeing ourselves…we are mirroring each other. As children of the Source of All, we have been birthed in love…the love that is apparent wherever we turn. Baldwin says that the world is held together by this love. He says that even though there are a precious few who exhibit this love and passion, it is powerful! Remember my client spoke of this outpouring of love and compassion as a different part of herself…it was a part perhaps that she had forgotten that was there. It may have been present in a slight tension in her chest or a gnawing in her gut, but it was able to show itself in a real way, that she says feels good.
Now Baldwin says that without this, we may feel despair. We are familiar with despair. It shows up in someone suffering from a terminal illness…one that may or may not find any effective treatment or resolution. It can show up in the aftermath of a loss that can stay with a person their whole life. It can show up when you keep trying and never seem to accomplish any goal. I witness this every day. So, we need this connection with others…especially others that are able to exhibit the love and passion that often becomes hidden. Otherwise, we might succumb. When asked how he continues to write, despite the possibility of despair, he said:
The logic of despair is for me, cut your throat, right. But there’s something wrong with someone who says they’re in despair who keeps on writing. Because a despairing man doesn’t write.
Yes, a despairing person does not write or continue to work toward their goals…their life’s working paper may be paused in such a case. I have witnessed this also. But what my client is saying, is that there is deep inside a part…a part that we sometimes access when we center down…Thurman called it the critical link with the eternal and the part of our fluid area of consent. It is perhaps the love that over and around us lies. But Baldwin goes further…he addresses his own mortality and the mortality of those he loves. He said:
I am aware that I and people I love may perish in the morning. I know that. But there’s light on our faces now. It you live under the shadow of death, it gives you a certain freedom.
Is there a light on my client’s face now? Is she better able to live under the shadow of death? I’m not sure, but I do know that she has discovered a part of herself that she can access in the times ahead…times that will demand strength and an at least small sense of hope. WEB Dubois said at the end of Reconstruction in 1877…We are not hopeless…we are unhopeful in America. This is a good distinction! Hopeless seems like despair, while unhopeful means that this is our present condition only…it could change.
So, I guess the question remains how do we develop feelings of compassion? I think what we’ve seen is that it takes a break…what my teacher Bayo would call a crack. I think this is what Thurman meant by Meditations of the Heart. If we meditate on the inward sea…the binding ties and the crucial issues of life, we will have the courage to live, knowing that life is alive. We will be able to get a clearer view of the horizon…that holy place where earth and sky meet. My father always spoke of this place…he always wished for that vantage point. I am beginning to know what he meant. It is what Thurman called a dream…the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope. My father realized, I think, as Thurman realized that…
The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions, you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge.
It is this growing edge that keeps us in the present moment…open to those parts of us that harbor that love and compassion that we need to do our work…to continue with our working paper.
May we join together in this Beloved Community in love and compassion…in connection with the source of all and may we give this all-pervading presence our love and attention…and our gratitude.
Amen
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