The Balance of Truth and Compassion

04 Dec 2008 Lonny's Blog

Hi Folks, I found this on the net a few years ago. SO much of what it takes to be a healer requires an ever deepening realization of the balance between truth and compassion. These few paragraphs elaborate that better than anything else Ive found. -Worth serious contemplation.

http://revkirkley.blogspot.com/2006/07/necessary-compassion-inconvenient.html

It isn’t always easy to practice compassion and truth, justice and
peace. We are often tempted, both personally and politically, to
sacrifice one for the sake of the other. We say that the truth is too
hard to bear, so compassion becomes the better part of dishonesty. Our
self-deception and lies are evidence of our goodness, or so we would
like to believe. We desire peace, but we are unwilling to meet the
demands of justice that provide the only sure foundation for a lasting
peace. So we settle for “security” based on emotional, economic, and
military forms of manipulation and coercion, and call it “peace.”

The truth is rarely convenient. If we are to embrace the truth, the
truth that sets us free and provides the basis for sound judgment and
right action, we must do so with compassion. Without compassion, the
truth can become unbearable. Without truth, compassion becomes both
useless and meaningless. Compassion cannot heal what it seeks to hide.
Truth cannot liberate when it serves only to condemn. Compassion and
truth must meet together. Only then are we capable of the sacrificial
love in which justice and peace kiss.