Gracevine Autumn 2015 | Page 9

In Praise of a Broken Heart:

Reflections upon Compassionate Growth Razia Aziz

Part One of an Edited Sermon written and delivered by Rev Razia Aziz on Easter Sunday, 5th April 2015 at Westwood Unitarian Church, Edmonton, Alberta, Cana

In the Name of the One, perfect in Compassion, perfect in Mercy. Peace be upon you this Easter Sunday. It is a pleasure and an incredible honour to be addressing you on the High Holy Day of the Christian faith. It is also something of a relief to be standing here with all limbs intact after a week’s skiing on icy slopes in the Rockies!

I am a One Spirit Interfaith minister. We are a notoriously unruly bunch – more like a herd of stray cats than a flock of sheep. Perhaps that’s why we tend to get on well with Unitarians.

We hold no one belief or doctrine, we have no church and no one binding spiritual tradition. We do all vow to serve whosoever should cross our path without discrimination. We pledge to pursue our own spiritual path, and to keep our own

personal vows.

When my sister-in law, Cassie, invited me to contribute to this month’s service, and told me that the theme of the month was ‘Compassionate Growth’, I had to smile. For someone who does not really ‘do’ compassion, and does not really believe in growth, it was the perfect challenge.

I have called this sermon ‘In Praise of a Broken Heart’, because, I realise that it is only in the context of a broken heart that the idea of ‘Compassionate Growth’ really makes sense to me. Indeed, it was only through the experience of heartbreak that my journey of ministry got going at all.

The reason I don’t ‘do’ compassion is both emotional and intellectual: emotionally I find compassion difficult. I’ve never been a particularly compassionate person. Which is probably why I was drawn to ministry. And having travelled this road a little way, I would recommend it to others who want a crash course in compassion.

Intellectually, the problem is more knotty. The word compassion literally means “to suffer together.” If this were all there was to compassion, it would surely be a dead end. The sense of isolation we feel when we suffer alone can no doubt be alleviated when another shares our pain. However, if our compassion is only to suffer with another, we paradoxically end up increasing, rather than decreasing, the total amount of suffering – two suffering people instead of one.