Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
I had planned to take a week or two off from writing Odd Company. But Monday nights just don’t seem the same without it. Probably more important is the fact that yesterday the Applied Compassion Training class of 2021 was officially graduated.
It was a pretty emotional occasion, I have to say. There were a hundred people in my “cohort,” each of whom has spent the past ten months working hard to learn and master the set of tools our ACT instructors presented to us, to read and study the course materials, make it to the many lectures and mentoring sessions. And, of course, to create and deliver our capstone compassion projects. This seems a little strange to me, but even though these interactions all took place over Zoom, it was a serious bonding experience. We spent a good deal of time in small groups of 3-6, talking about how various aspects of compassion had affected our own lives. Or about how our projects were going — or not going. We shared a lot of frustrations, celebrations, and meaningful conversations. We lent a lot of support to one another. Yesterday, when it was time to say good-bye, there were plenty of tears.
We were in meetings for the better part of three days, on Friday, Saturday, and finally Sunday. Much of that time we spent unpacking the ways in which our experiences of the past months changed us. Learning about compassion in such an intense way does change people. Writing Odd Company and having conversations with my readers has certainly changed me and the way I plan to spend the rest of my life. Writing is my way of understanding my own thoughts and feelings, and especially a way of understanding what I’ve learned. I thank you all, dear readers, for following these newsletters, for thinking about them, and for asking questions that required further consideration on my part.
Some of what we did over the weekend was learn ways to continue our compassion work without the structure of the class and the close contact with our classmates that we’ve become used to. It’s easier to stay in touch with large numbers of geographically scattered friends now than it has ever been before, so we won’t entirely lose touch with our teachers and classmates. There will still be opportunities for us to discuss aspects of compassion together. Which suits me. I love it when I’m learning.
All of which is to say, Odd Company will continue. I’m rethinking the day of the week for publication, and will probably cut the schedule back to every other week, with occasional supplements for exciting discoveries. But there’s still a lot left to talk about. So much, in fact, that there’s no danger of running out of material…ever!
Tonight, for example. This week I’ve been putting in some more rumination about forgiveness. And it occurred to me that two of my examples from last week — the story of the spilled milk, and the story of True Grit — are perfect illustrations of two approaches to “justice.” In the milk story, I was able to experience what is known as the “restorative” approach. That is, I apologized and gave Davey’s mother a quart of milk to replace what I had dumped in the gutter. I “restored” her as well as I was able. It wasn’t the same milk, but it was a pretty good substitute. True Grit is an example of “retributive” justice, which is the way most Americans are accustomed to approaching it. Mattie’s father is shot and killed, and Mattie spends the rest of the book hunting for the killer so she can bring him in to be hanged.
Our system of justice relies heavily on incarceration — a form of retribution. Someone hurts me. In return, the state imprisons (or executes) the guilty party. There is rarely any close interaction between the criminal and the victim after the crime is committed. This system actively discourages it, in fact.
So this is something to think about between now and the next issue of Odd Company, in which I’ll go further into the pros and cons of these two approaches to justice. I’m sure you can already guess which one leads more often to forgiveness. But these things are seldom simple.
Tonight’s good-bye is a song I’ve chosen for no better reason than it’s one of my very most favorite songs in the world. It’s certainly a good illustration of wanting what we don’t have. Here’s Lyle Lovett with “If I Had a Boat.” Till next time…