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SUE ANNA TUCKER
Washington

Michel Eubank Spruance gave me a card for this site when I was volunteering at the [Seeds of Compassion] office at the Seattle Center and finally I’m getting around to foraging it out of my wallet and taking the leap to share.
There were many moments of experiencing compassion for me. First of all was the kind parking enforcer who let me park my car on the street and put a “ticket” on it authorizing my temporary parking to get my flat tire fixed. Then there was the volunteer who offered to fix it when I told him and another person what had happened to me. As he was fixing the tire, two young men came up and offered to help. There was the volunteer who treated me to a cup of Chai tea.
[Later] there was the man who offered me a ride to the [Seeds of Compassion] event on Saturday when he saw my volunteer t-shirt and we struck up a conversation (I was on the Fauntleroy/West Seattle ferry and was planning to take the bus to the stadium). There were the tickets turned back in that were in turn given to me. One ticket was for the Dave Matthews concert and the other for Saturday’s event. In both I got wonderful seats, at least from my perspective.
Compassion is something we offer to others when we see their need and it is also in asking and in receiving the compassion. We make ourselves vulnerable in opening up to others our need, in giving from an open heart and in opening up to receive, but in doing so we become like streams in the desert, no longer dammed up behind walls of inward turned self-protection and provision, but in reciprocal caring for one another out of the heart of compassion. It is through the seemingly vulnerable, unpractical, “unsafe” acts of compassion in asking, giving and receiving that living streams of the web of life flow out, turning the dry and desolate into an oasis of paradise.