Compassionate Care in Community

News

Recently I received a call from a young woman asking whether I could go to the crematorium in Mahón to ‘say a few words’ for her mother, who had just died following an extended period of cancer treatment. ‘There will just be a few of us,’ she said, with the expectation that would mean four or five people. I turned up at the cemetery to be confronted with an animated undertaker who protested that there were too many people to fit into the little room adjacent to the crematorium. Somewhat mystified, I walked up to the rooms of the ‘tanatorio’ to find that there were thirty people there! The daughter was as surprised as I was. By word of mouth, or the ‘Menorca grapevine,’ news had spread of the lady’s death, and people just turned up in sympathy and solidarity. Well, ‘saying a few words’ for four or five people is a little different from addressing a group of thirty, so I had to improvise, but as I said to the daughter afterwards, this is an example of the community spirit that exists in Menorca, and an example of compassionate care. It also exemplifies how import ritual is in human life.

We very much need some sort of ceremonial celebration of life, death and the important milestones in between. The church has these covered in worship for baptism/christening, marriage and funeral, of course, but it is interesting to see how, as increasingly ‘unchurched’ generations appear on the scene, people make all sorts of different efforts to improvise ritual. Those little floral tributes by the side of the road where there has been a traffic accident are an example. But it goes further than that, because ritual is a communal thing. Human beings are meant to live in community. Throughout history there have been plenty of examples of people trying to live in isolation, as hermits, for example, and more often than not these fail because health suffers when we are completely alone. So our rituals are ways of coming together to share in celebration or grief. And although there’s sometimes a sort of anxiety about how to behave or what to say, the reality is that our presence is more often than not the greatest gift we have to offer.

There’s a lovely song by Yusuf Islam (alias Cat Stevens) called, How Can I Tell You? It’s a love song, but it captures the essence of being tongue-tied in the face of extreme emotion: ‘I can’t think of the right words to say.’ Those of us with an introverted personality type know only too well the frustration of always thinking of the right thing to say about an hour after a conversation! But it’s also symptomatic of the awkwardness of dealing with someone who had been bereaved. The truth is that there are no ‘right words to say.’ The best form of compassion is quite often simply to turn up and be present. No words are required. There was a young woman in our church in Canada who was long on silence and short on conversation. She, too, struggled with the right words to say, and would often sit in prolonged silence. Yet applied in the right direction that was a gift. It made her the best hospice visitor I have ever known, because she was quite content to sit in calm silence, usually prayerfully, with someone who really just wanted companionship, rather than conversation.

At the end of May the Anglican churches of northern Spain and the Balearics are hosting a retreat in Barcelona. The title is, ‘Joy is a Kingdom of Justice and Peace,’ but a large part of the time will be devoted to thinking about how we care for one another in community - how we show compassion (a word derived from ‘with feeling’) and care, collectively. This is something that applies on a large scale, such as supporting projects that assist those in need in countries that are less well off than we are, through a process of listening, observation and action. It also applies on a local level, where we visit those who are socially isolated, assist those who arrive with scant resources (as happened for those from Ukraine), support those who are going through a health crisis, or simply bestow the gift of our caring presence upon those who have been bereaved.

What I have found is that all these are really more than acts of compassion; they are expressions of love. There are many forms of love, but caring for one another in community is quite often a way to channel the love that has been invested in humanity. And while I might have a professional axe to grind in terms of the way this applies in a Christian community of faith, I’ve seen enough to know that no one religious group has a monopoly of loving care for those in the surrounding community. In British Columbia, for example, where we lived before moving to Menorca, there is a large Sikh population. Anyone who is hungry can go to a Sikh temple and be fed, on any day of the year. That’s quite a challenging level at which to set the bar of collective care! In the Anglican Church in Menorca, we have produced a commitment to apply a fixed percentage of our income to support organisations outside the church, even when the church faces a deficit of expense over income.

Meanwhile, just turning up at a funeral in solidarity with those who have been bereaved is most definitely a way to show compassion and even love. Never mind the ‘right words;’ just being there can be comforting and helpful.