The Cure for Compassion Overload

I'm wondering if I'm suffering from compassion overload. Sometimes I want to jump on a plane to China, find parents who lost children in the earthquake, wrap my arms around them and absorb their grief. I can't believe that officials wouldn't let parents into their children's school until two days after the earthquake. They just wanted to rescue their children or find their bodies. 

Why did they have to wait?

Why did the victims of the cyclone in Myanmar have to wait until their government got good and ready to allow overseas aid in to their country? 

And why, nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina, are many residents of New Orleans still waiting?

Yes, New Orleans still needs help. The French Quarter is back to normal, but people in the lower Ninth Ward, St. Bernard's Parish, and Lakeview continue to suffer. I recently received an e-mail describing the vast number of abandoned buildings still bearing the spray painted X left by the rescuers, and the large numbers of people still living in trailers waiting for help rebuilding their homes. The e-mail came from Morton of Dallas who describes meeting a resilient group of people.

"I found the people to be exhausted and yet there was a sparkle in their eyes," he writes. 

He visited with a Jewish couple, not wealthy at all, "working 80 hours a week, unpaid to run a Women's shelter."

He visited with a Christian pastor who chooses to live in a trailer himself while finding houses for others. When Morton asked about whether he needed financial assistance, Pastor Davenport is quoted as saying, "if the admission price for heaven was $2, we'd have to have a lay-away plan to get in."

We really don't have to fly to China or Myanmar to help out. There are people who do that, and we can donate to them. 

And we also can support the ordinary Americans who "have seen a problem, identified the challenge, stepped forth without the resources and made something happen."

 The e-mail from Morton of Dallas may offer an antidote for compassion overload. 

1. Read about the Women's Shelter and its wish list here.
   
2. Read about Pastor Davenport here.
   
3. Donate money or items through their websites.
   
4. Plan a vacation in New Orleans. Tourism dollars also help rebuild the city.
   

The resilient spirit of the New Orleans residents is alive and well. 

The spirit of the self-gift is alive and well in people like the pastor, the couple, and Morton of Dallas.

The cure for compassion overload is love in action.

We can do no great things; only small things with great love. 

Mother Theresa