Compassionate Connection

Compassionate Connection is a practice-based, formational ministry empowering individuals, ministry professionals and groups to nurture wholeness and vitality in their relationships with God, self, and others. It is committed to creating a space of healing, renewal and growth.

Premises

God longs for human beings to experience fullness of life.

Our bodies are reliable and honest witnesses to what is alive inside of us [thoughts, feelings, needs.]

Everything that people do is an attempt to meet needs.

The things we say and do i.e. the choices we make... are the strategies that we choose to meet those needs.

Everyone is doing the best that they can to meet their needs at any given moment.

Because every expression is an attempt to meet needs, all attacks, criticism, judgment etc. are tragic expressions of needs.

I do not want to have my needs met at the expense of others needs, that is, I want to value anothers needs as I do my own.

I know that when my needs are seen/heard empathically and when I see/hear another's needs empathically, that it stimulates natural compassion.  We then want to contribute to each other's well-being.

Practices

Self-Awareness -- Naming and navigating inner space i.e. thoughts, feelings & needs

Intention/Choice -- What is or will be my chosen approach to a situation?

Identifying Needs -- For the purpose of inner clarity and peace & Connection to Life [not lack or deficiency]

Empathy -- means extending compassion without helping, fixing, agreeing or disagreeing with someone's feelings.  It means being present to someone heart-to-heart.

Self empathy -- Compassion for self, acknowledging pain, difficulty

Making observations [not evaluations] and requests [not demands]

Process

Compassionate Communication is a process through which we identify and cultivate a language of compassion [inner, outer] and a lived quality of fullness, daily connection to Life.

Wild Geese By Wendell Berry

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer’s end. In time’s maze

over the fall fields, we name names

that went west from here,

names that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed’s marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear,

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear. What we need is here.

(From Collected Poems, 1957-1982, North Point Press, 1987)

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A wonderful poem by Betsy Beckmann... offering a taste of our upcoming prayer retreat "Let God Love You: a rediscovery of prayer" to inquire please contact ransmit@charter.net... please also feel welcome to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes below... blessings

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By Wendell Berry

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