By the time you turn on to the main boulevard, you are sobbing but continue to drive. It finally hits you, what the social worker had really said. She has no shoes. You can still remember that day but not with a sense of shame or guilt. What remains are the lessons you learned.
Compassion involves risk.
You run the risk of seeing another as a person rather than an object. You are in danger of seeing yourself reflected in that person, more alike than different. Your carefully constructed defenses can break down, revealing your own humanity, in all its beauty and brokenness. You soon realize that you cry as much for yourself as for another. Bo Armstrong is a communicant at St. Francis of Assisi, Ooltewah.