Conversations with joy

Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost● November 26, 2023

Readings: Ruth 1:1-22 (Inclusive Bible)

Joy Sanjek © 2023

You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://youtu.be/4F2FIw-NzZ8?feature=shared

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about compassion, which has been an important part of my journey and is now a more intentional focus of my life and work. 

Simplest definition I found of Compassion is the desire to relieve suffering. Webster adds to pity and commiserate. I don’t think either relieves suffering and they can actually add to suffering.

 I believe to be compassionate is to be present with another’s suffering and wanting to relieve it but not take it on or try to fix it. In my experience it is bearing witness to and standing with ones suffering without judgement. It’s often meeting a person with acceptance of where they are and not where you want them to be.

 Compassion is an important value or virtue held in most every religion. God as the Compassionate One, the Merciful.  In the scriptures, Jesus is the embodiment of compassion in many stories. 

 In “Compassion and the Individual.  The 14th Dalai Lama says “compassion is by nature, peaceful and soft, but it is also very powerful” 

 Compassion is one of the five core values of Ubuntu Translated to say…I am because we are. Ubuntu and compassion are alive and well, fostered in COTV.

 First while preparing for today, looking back on my own life’s journey, I realized compassion was sorely lacking when I was suffering as a child. I did not feel seen, heard, considered or accepted, neither in my home nor out in the world. 

 There was a lot of chaos going on in my home, that was being denied, which was confusing and had me questioning myself. I was physically sick and nearly died in 3rd grade and at 17. Anything I struggled with was Dismissed or I was even blamed for and I was told that I was difficult. And I often heard..

Why can’t you just be like”…usually one of the Karens. 

Early in life, i learned to deny physical or emotional pain and my go to phrase was “I’m fine”. 

 I was different from the kids on my block and was made to feel that way, especially by the girls, they were mean. Living across from St Francis, the only Lutheran kid, I went to public school, didn’t wear the parochial school uniform, I wasn’t Irish, Italian or German, and my family was from 2 strange countries. 

 And one of the priests used to hang out at my house, drink wild turkey with my mother and go to the track with my father. That didn’t help. Then they got divorced, one more way I was different, the child of a broken alcoholic home who now had to deal with two dysfunctional homes. That got me some pity, but pity didn’t help, it only made me feel worse.

 School felt like a safe haven to me, and I was acknowledged there, when I did well.

I sought out others who were also different and befriended the kids from different cultures, races and backgrounds.  My “best friends” were Lillian, a black girl who was bussed into my elementary school, and Auronia, the Greek kid who had just immigrated. 

I felt like I sort of fit in.

Then some bad things happened to me, which led to other bad things,  which I tried to hide, but kids talk, with blame and shame. 8th grade was hell and I begged to go to Martin Luther HS to get away from the bullying. My grandfather who was a divorced Lutheran minister, got my parents to agree, but I refused to go back after 1 year, and went to public high school. No one even noticed that I was in trouble, or if they did, there was no compassion then either. 

I relate so personally to how Naomi felt in today’s reading “Don’t call me Naomi, which means Joy, for YHWH has afflicted me and Shaddai has brought bitter destruction on me brought me to ruin. 

 It was very hard for me to be called Joy back then too.

That was when I stopped going to church. 

I met my best friend Ann, who didn’t fit in either, and we create our own little community of girls. We felt safe enough to share our woundedness with  each other. 

I was shown compassion and I began to have some self-compassion.

We identified as hippies, with all the exploration of the late 60’s. Then Leon’s bar and grill, became the place where I found community, I was only 16, hanging out with people much older, and in a crazy environment.

Clearly I was numbing my suffering. 

 Sorry, it all sounds a bit bleak, just like the scripture reading was bleak, but I promise it does get better in both stories.

By the way the Collage that is the image used today is entitled “Pain Denied”…

It represents my pain but also the denied pain of many others that I encountered.

Over the years, I came to see that my experiences and the feelings I had were more common than I could ever have imagined, when I felt so alone.

Let me jump ahead to the compassionate communities I worked in, for 25 years…as a milieu therapist, in an array of wholistic health center, day treatment programs and residential programs, first with adolescents and then with people living with AIDS.

The Door, Bailey House, ARC, Rivington House and Village Center for Care were all grassroots communities that helped me heal as I helped others heal. These were safe havens for folks, many of whom felt abused, abandoned and alone. 

The love and compassion the staff had for clients and each other was an important component to that process.  As staff we shared our selves and we created opportunities to talk and we all listened to each other as individuals and as a community. We quit intentionally made space to bear witness to each other’s suffering. We saw each other’s good, bad, ugly and beautiful parts without judgement and with acceptance. And there were lots of wonderful hugs.

One day many years after I was no longer working in community I got an unexpected gift on the Highline after my Tai Chi community finished a demo-class. 

Tony who had been part of one of my communities, recognized me and told me how our work had impacted him many lifetimes ago, when he was an active drug addict. He recounted how I stood compassionately with him in his struggle, with patience and kindness as he judged himself harshly.  All I could do was be present with him and bear witness to his suffering, without trying to fix it. 

He didn’t understand how I could have stuck with him, but he was grateful I did. My caring stayed with him, until he was ready to have compassion for himself. Only then did he do the work that led to him being clean, drug free.  

He now had a life that he had never seen as possible. 

It was a blessing that Tony finally got to share that he was sober and what my compassion meant to him. 

And since we don’t always get to know what impact we may have had on someone’s journey, 

it was a real gift to me as well.

The Dalai Lama said, I quote…from my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from development of love and compassion.  

Twenty years after leaving my last community on 20th St, i’m now in private practice. There are some of us, both staff and some clients that are still walking with each other, still present for each other’s celebrations, losses and sadness. 

I believe we keep moving forward with the support and compassion of each other.

I am again reminded of today’s scripture reading that in the face of great loss and grief Ruth remained with Naomi and the love and compassion they had for each other helped them keep going. 

And of Unbutu, I am because we are.

As a Gestalt therapist, in private practice, no longer a Milieu therapist in communities, I still believe that the relationship with our clients is an important part of the healing process.  

I have a number of relationships with clients that span many years. When there is clear healing or some goal attained, I encourage my folks to go, live life with new tools and self compassion. I let them know that my door is always open. The longevity of relationship, deepens the connection. 

Some reach out with updates of life changes, invitations to wedding, pictures of new babies, and their kids growing up. Some clients return to continue another layer of work when there’s a change, a loss of someone or something important, or something emerges that needs to be tended to. 

 Some say just knowing I’m there is enough to help them thru.

 One particular 20 year therapeutic relationship inspired the choice of today’s scripture and today’s sermon  title “Conversations With Joy”, which has multiple meanings. 

Both women in the Bible had suffered tremendous loss and they had a powerful love and compassion for each other, which helped them to keep going and thrive. My client Yazmin and I have been connected on and off for all twenty years and she knows I will be here for her if she needs me. I’ve celebrated the birth of her kids, cheered her on for her educational and professional accomplishments and at a NYC marathon. We have both healed and grown together, just like Naomi and Ruth 

When I first met Yazmin she was suffering in silence, feeling neglected and alone. She had moved a lot with her family, living all over the world, often not speaking the language or understanding cultures experiencing abuse. Now she was living with, and often hiding, her bulemia for many years. It sounds bleak, but I promise it gets better. 

 After we worked for some time, she wrote a book about here incredible life. The first paragraph of the book she wrote was about our initial meeting and she identified that my expressing and showing her compassion shifted something in her. In Gestalt we say “Shift Happens” and it was the beginning of an incredible journey of healing that we traveled together. 

Yazmin wrote a poem, which she gave me permission to read here today.

As I said it gets better. She is a number of years without any binging and purging and has a healthy relationship to food and runs marathons. She has a beautiful family and a lovely home. 

Yazmin is doing amazing work standing compassionately with kids that are struggling. She gives them language for their feelings, helps them have their voices, and to feel seen, heard and understood. She knows if we help little kids, like we helped her inner little ones when she was 25, they wont suffer as she did. She’s also studying to be a Spiritual leader in her community. Compassion leads the way.

I have been fortunate to have been a part of many wonderful communities.  I think that I have been experiencing Ubuntu even though I was not familiar with the concept. I am because of who we are together in community. I am good at what I do because of my life experiences and struggles, but also because of being a part of a healing milieu. 

There is only one community that I have been part of, since 1990 and that is this church. I first became a member at Washington Square and now COTV. Admittedly during those 33 years I have left and returned and I have always been welcomed back without judgement. 

We gather together on Sunday to feel inspired for the rest of our week, And for many for a sense of belonging to a faith community. I believe that this church is unusual  in that it creates unique, intentional opportunities to see, hear, and know each other. 

I see COTV thru the lens of a milieu therapist, as  a wholistic healing community that is welcoming and embraces all people, and meets them where they are with acceptance, love and compassion.

We are encouraged to share our gifts and talents, of music, dance and to be part of the upcoming Christmas Pageant which is all so much fun.  There are opportunities to find images or graphics for the program and to help with tech support. And there’s creating the alter and the sanctuary space each Sunday and for special occasions. We share meals, sometime potluck dinners. Some have found their way here through the Red Door program, which feeds people. All these shared experiences bring us joy and support us to feel more comfortable with each other and willing to engage.

The Pastoral and worship teams at COTV support connection with great intention. 

Inviting members of the community to preach, and to craft the prayers of the community for the service. There are opportunities to offer monthly healing prayers, or to be part of the Ministers of Care team, Prayer Groups and Bible study and book groups. And the Roots group always asks three thought provoking questions. All are ways for the congregants to talk with each other in order to learn about each other, to better know each other and to be caring and compassionate. Being of service we can be contributing members which always helps us to feel part of the community. These are all opportunities to be compassionate with each other. And of course there are wonderful hugs.

We Recognize, acknowledge and respect difference,  and look for common ground and similarities in how we think and feel. Everyone is invited, welcome, safe and beloved.

All of those experiences support our willingness to be seen, heard and known

 I wanted to reflect on my experience of  what happened when the post-sermon question was offered last week.  

The tables are  intentionally set up to create a more intimate small group experience, which inspires deeper conversation.  Each small group table was engaged in lively discussions, facilitated by church members. 

At our table we had quite a diverse group, representing different races and cultures, sexual orientations, and a real range in ages from some of us OG’s to our youngest member. 

Everyone shared a life experience, some painful stories that we still carried with us. All very different life experiences and yet each of us recounted being made to feel different, less than or even shamed at some point in their lives. 

I once again witnessed how in the sharing of our lives, we can find commonalities, like-mindedness and acceptance of our otherness. There was a felt sense of compassion in our group.  I can feel seen, heard, understood. I’m not alone, we all struggle. 

The Dalai Lama says. “If you want others to be happy, be compassionate, 

if you want to be happy be compassionate.”

And please call me Joy!

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