“That was the defining moment of the journey. Of all the footsteps we had taken.”
I sat with Rose on her parent’s porch this morning, breathtaking views of Kampala landscaped behind her,
reflecting on Saturday’s twenty-eight mile walk. She encapsulated moments from that day with various adjectives. Fulfillment. Struggle. Memories. Joy. Laughter. Solidarity. But the one moment Rose couldn’t find a fitting word for was the moment her mother literally collapsed into her arms at Kiwoko Hospital. It wasn’t the actual feat of completing the entire walk that defined this moment above the rest, it was the incarnation of compassion through her mother’s journey. By walking the entire stretch Rose had walked twenty years ago she was saying, I want to feel what you felt. I want to know what you knew as a little girl. I want to see the world that led you to me.
This is true compassion.
So often in my western instincts I am tempted to mark a swell of emotion or a gesture of sympathy as a manifestation of compassion. But as I learn from Rose, and many others within this great cloud of witnesses, compassion is more than hurting for someone, it is hurting with them. The latin root “pati” and “cum” literally translates “to suffer with.” The defining moment of compassion in Rose’s journey was not the moment the Clarke’s adopted her into their family twenty years ago. It was the moment her mother traced twenty-eight miles of her footsteps with compassion.
