Emma and Helen Sloan are such Universalists. I believe that this is the universalism of God, as well. To respond to the world begins with compassion. And it is no accident that this word compassion comes from two roots, com , meaning with , and passion , meaning to suffer . Compassion means to suffer with.
Compassion is the ability to share in some small way the experiences that another human has had.
The theme of compassion winds its way through Emma s life. She was a teacher, and teaching is by nature compassionate work. It is a good preparation of the world for so many new lives, and it is a work whose harvest may come long after our own lives have finished. And we as a community dedicated ourselves to Ruby Leary today, and that also implies an openness to compassion - in this case, we are agreeing to share in Ruby s life, and to build among ourselves a community for her that we hope will be even better than the world we were born into. So, while there are traditional elements within this ritual of dedication, our way of welcoming Ruby to the world is to dedicate ourselves TO her.