Looking for Compassion in a Broken World

In 1864 our country experienced the bloodiest battle of the Civil War: The Battle of Franklin held in Franklin, Tennessee. 

Somewhere in Texas, a family learned that their beloved son had been killed in the conflict. They packed up their belongings and took a covered wagon to retrieve his remains so he could be properly buried in Texas. Once they arrived in Tennessee, to their own surprise they had a change of heart.

They saw the cemetery with rows and rows of graves (from both sides). 23,000 men and boys died there, and the family didn’t expect to have the calm reaction they did. It wasn't an easy decision, but ultimately their son would remain with his regiment memorialized at the site where he lost his life fighting for freedoms. Freedoms I’m not sure I realize or appreciate.  

We are in a new war. Inside of our own country. Saturday night in Orlando, Florida, our sons and daughters danced with their own freedoms and with abandon on a dance floor that would soon become a battlefield. Parents didn’t get to say goodbye, or hang stars in their window. No one signed up and no one was drafted. But we are all on a battlefield. This plane I am on, the tall office tower I work in—someone, somewhere is designing a strategy to take these places that were safe for us and make them unsafe. Our battlefield is airborne, and being afraid of “catching terrorism” isn’t going to make it go away.

I’ve been living in fear a long time.

When I was a little girl I was afraid of everything: first tornadoes. Living in Tornado Alley in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I was so scared of tornadoes I would keep watch in the front yard on cloudy days, looking for mammary clouds, Then I was scared of the end of the world, then alien abduction, then cancer.  And now I am in the most fragile time of our history and our future not really sure how to feel. 

At a recent speech my friend Mina Chang from Linking the World gave us a sobering statistic: "It’s predicted that extremism will directly impact every person in America within the next 10 years”.

Why are we not freaking out?

And clearly that’s not the right response either, but I worry than I exist in my reaction to Orlando somewhere between distraught and helpless, enraged and complacent. Is it the false-gratification of social media? Has my life been so safe and so comfortable that I can’t even exist in a fear and concern that truly motivates me to act?

Well I signed this petition, and I shared it, too, so I must be making a difference.

Maybe if I change my profile picture to #withorlando, others will do the same.

Maybe I should write a blog post.

Cities are doing it too: “profile pics” of buildings awash in rainbow LEDs, flags at half-mast, Paris loves Orlando, and New York, Dallas, too. We are with you, Orlando, but are we really?

I’ve prayed a few times today. I’ve also caught myself staring off into blank space, thoughts flown from the place I was to the victims, the responders, the caregivers, the mothers, the fathers, the city: what is was like inside of Pulse: dark and confusing, unreal. I’ve watched a little news—and that was more than enough.

Last night as the Tony’s concluded, the lyrics from Hamilton’s The Schuyler Sisters put a rock solid pit in my stomach:

Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now!

History is happening in Manhattan and we just happen to be

In the greatest city in the world.

And those 49 (or is it 50) beautiful souls are not so lucky, are they? I don’t blame The American TheatreWing's Tony Awards. Those event organizers had their hands full with producing a show in the paradox of joy and grief.  But really—maybe a moment of silence at the close of the show would have been the action we needed at the end rather than a reminder that we are lucky. And alive. And I am saying this as a huge fan of Hamilton.

And so it is—the second day after a horrible day. And how long with this stick with us? This ache of sadness: the one that turns into something different? Will the “different” that we forget and go back to “normal”. There is a price for forgetting bad times. 


Or will it be that someone organizes a lecture on what it means to be a Muslim, or sends a care package to a hospital in Florida? Will we meet in small groups and talk about how we really can “be with Orlando?”. 

What compassionate action can I take that will alleviate (even in the smallest way) the suffering of others? Now?

Hopeless isn’t in my vocabulary so it has to be something. There has to be something I can do –I can’t take a covered wagon across the country to honor these fallen heroes, but I can do something about it in my own life: make tomorrow matter more that it was going to before I woke up Sunday morning. Until then I will look for love and light in the darkest places. And I know you’re here with me, too.

What passion in us, besides one motivated by fear will make us patriots again? Where we are living not in fear, but in a new awareness of the world: a world we are all creating together. A world where fear and hate have become replaced with love and compassion. I can choose to live this way, not standing out in front of my house looking for clouds that look like they might become tornadoes, but finding a peace inside--the peace that true patriots know. 

Lotus Lens Director's Letter, Summer 2016

We launched our year with a two-day course on compassion in the workplace, titled Action and Accountability, developed by our friends at Dorrier Underwood Consulting. Almost sixty participants from organizations like the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, American Airlines, and Toyota gathered with the Crow team to explore communication steeped in loving-kindness: speech that is closer to straight talk, yielding swifter results and more mutual understanding of common goals. One might not expect this work in an Asian art museum, but this effort to better know our true nature is beautifully aligned with our study of compassion as it is realized in ourselves, our work, and in our museum.

For the Crow Collection of Asian Art, three primary goals emerged for 2016: Fundraising, Multiculturalism, and Compassion. In tandem with premiering beautiful collections this year from Brooklyn, Chicago, and Mexico City, the Crow team is forging paths to greater independence through the launch of a development office and extending the opportunity of growing this museum to all of you in the community. In January, we received our first gift of significance, inspiring us to delve into new relationships with our beloved donors and partnering with the corporate communities as well.

Thanks to the bright initiative in the education department, multiculturalism has also been a topic of impassioned commitment among our team. I am proud to write that we are looking at our museum with fresh eyes toward mission and vision, and how this collection, forged by Margaret and Trammell Crow, finds relevance in the diverse landscape that is Dallas seventeen years later. We’ve held several internal workshops, increasing our understanding of how we are perceived in the community and how we wish to be known. This new world of broader understanding is a practice of self-compassion and one that will make our museum stronger and more diverse in the future.

In the first quarter of the year, we launched a multi-year Study of Compassion with a series of lectures devoted to this topic and how compassion relates to a human experience of art and healing. A collection of podcasts on compassion will be posted on our website and through social media in the future, as we continue to discover compassion for ourselves in an effort to make connections for others.

The opportunity to explore compassion in the works of Tibetan Buddhism is yours through the summer in Protecting Wisdom: Tibetan Book Covers from the MacLean Collection. Curator Dr. Kathryn Selig Brown’s delightful interview with Dr. Jacqueline Chao in this issue of the Lotus Lens illuminates lessons of compassion as they relate to attainment of enlightenment through wisdom—all captured beneath the delicate repoussé book covers in the esteemed MacLean Collection.

Additionally, Dr. Qing Chang unveils new research of the cinnabar Lacquer vase in the collection, launching an important new commitment toward scholarly research and unprecedented study of our works. I am proud of the board’s attention to this critical and compassionate step toward our future as 

Thoughts on Study

Compassion, when one starts to look for it, whether in the gestural curves of a stele of Vishnu or in the graceful teaching mudras of a Bodhisaatva, exists in many places in and around the Dallas Arts District. Compassion is, when one starts to look for it, everywhere.

One of the first places that inspired the Study of Compassion is one block away at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Just off to the right of the main entrance, next to a life-size statue of the Virgin, is a small vestibule for the placing of prayer candles. At night, it glows: hundreds of candles placed lovingly on the shelves are a manifestation of hope and devotion, compassion and love. Placing these candles is not only a practice of a religious faith, it is an action to express care and concern for another’s suffering. Compassion lives, twenty-four hours a day, at our treasured downtown cathedral.

This experience, of being consumed by the candles in both sense and sight, propelled me to ask: Where do we find compassion in our daily lives and practices? And how can we find more of it? Very occasionally, a visitor might leave a small offering of a coin or two on the pedestal in front of the Ganesha or linger with the Buddha as part of their own practice, but how can we teach the complex lessons of compassion every day at the Crow Collection of Asian Art? Why does the need for compassion seem more urgent with every passing headline?

Where do we start? I wrote first to Karen Armstrong, author of Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life and founder of The Charter for Compassion. Since our visit by phone, the museum has signed the Charter and joined a coalition of more than thirty cities in North Texas committed to compassion and education. Ms. Armstrong’s third chapter: Self-compassion was the signpost I was looking for, and the one I needed the most. Before we can illuminate compassion in Asian Art and teach others, we have to look to where compassion lives in us. And in me. Where does compassion live in the words that I speak, and the actions I make in conversations with others? Am I authentically practicing loving-kindness when I criticize others or speak with pretense? No. Compassion lives in the moment I pause, take a deep breath, and send love in the place of what was there. This reaction, the negative one, is the mindfulness bell to change the moment to a new action: something kind and understanding. And then, when that happens, yes, I am compassion. We all are.

Millions of Grains of Sand and One Lesson in Compassion

The monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery were recently in Dallas for the annual residency at the Crow Collection of Asian Art. The organization has been supporting our interest in sharing Tibet for seventeen years: seventeen mandalas, almost 200 monks, prayer flag exchanges, high school students immersed in widening worlds--each year our world getting a little bit bigger and a lot smaller at the same time.

The week's planning and coordination has become fine-tuned by our skillful team: schedules are full with community dinners, school visits; the altar is prepared with fresh fruit, flowers and milk; the table upon which the mandala will be constructed is painted with a fresh coat of silky black paint. I consider the layers: white chalk lines from various mandalas over the years all here on this table I hope we will always use.

Each year the group of ten or eleven men selected to participate in the US tour are different. Occasionally we may re-unite with a Geshe or a driver who has been here before, but generally our meetings are new and very literally once-in-this lifetime.

The staff at the museum loves this experience, and this passion shows in how much care and concern they devote to the week. No day is too long, every moment to be with these young buddhist scholars is the moment to be in--and nothing else matters. I watched them laugh and play, I watched them ask questions, practicing both English and Tibetan with equal patience and respect: both parties were in the moment to learn.

Is this not compassion manifest? A young team of museum employees taking these monks of a similar age into their care and expressing sincere interest in their story, their hopes and experiences. Similarly, these young monks, seeing Texas for the first time: days spent intensely hunched over the mandala: creating Amitayus in a majestic universe helping us all get a little more comfortable with the realities of time and impermanence.

What is the cumulative impact of years of witnessing the construction and creation of mandala after mandala? Are we more comfortable with endings and beginnings? Are we more patient? I see the pilgrims return year after year, and I wonder how their lives are different. I know mine is. I send only peace and gratitude to those who make the Mystical Arts of Tibet possible, and to the monks who work through aching muscles and fatigue. Dallas is better because of them. 

The Church on Times Square I Almost Missed

This week I am in New York: meeting with inspiring leaders and artists who are redefining Art and the Art Museum every day. I am staying in a neighborhood that is new and bewildering to me: Times Square.

I've probably spent more time underneath Times Square than at it's surface: it was once, in my Summer in New York (ca. 1998), an easy place for me to brave the complicated subway system. Times Square is the setting on my Lionel Train Setting that my parents didn't like for us to use: full power hot (that part of the switch was red) with sparks flying under the locomotive's wheels. "Burn, baby burn" we used to say. Times Square is hot. The hi-def screens are bigger, the crowds maddening, police now carry machine guns and there is an energy of excitement and fear at the same time.  This is not a place for any kind of solitude or meditation.

Nonetheless, I like to try new things and this hotel is one I haven't tried before. It is 1/2 a block from Broadway at 46th: right in the heart of all of this electricity. When I visit New York I, like so many of you, make every minute count. I look for the antidote to this heightened pace--in a nearby coffee shop, Central Park or a quiet corner in the lobby of hotels. Once I sat next to a lit fire in the fireplace of the Eventi Hotel on and extraordinarily hot day in June. I love the contrasts of this City. I found one on this trip too.

When I walk into a new hotel room the first place I go to is the window. What can I see? How much light in the room can be natural? New York City Hotels are tricky. I've moved rooms three and four times seeking a room with light and a view. It doesn't have to be high, just open. This Texas Girl always needs a piece of sky.

My window this week is curtained by the remarkable rose window and the stone facade of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin: an Episcopal Church in the Catholic tradition. This church was built between 1894 and 1895 and designed by Napoleon Le Brun & Sons: the architects of the New York Metropolitan Life Building. I'm not surprised one bit that there is an Episcopalian Church at my doorstep: the Episcopalian Church has been with me all of the days of my life and as the motto goes: The Episcopal Church [always] Welcomes Me.

I crossed the dark threshold yesterday morning a few minutes before Morning Prayer was to begin. As I expected, I was overcome with awe: the church behind this unassuming stone facade is spectacular. New York happens this way.

St. Mary's Times Square was designed in the style of thirteenth century French Gothic churches and is modeled after one of the most beautiful spaces in the world: Saint-Chappelle in Paris. Right here on 46th Street between Havana Central and the Laura Pels Theater: a little bit of Paris. A lot of quiet.

As I tentatively walked in I was struck first by the snoring. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I saw their hunched-over figures: at least twelve tired humans who--sometime in the night--found the warm comfort of the church as their temporary home. They were spread out across as many aisles sleeping soundly at least for a few hours. I read that this church has a an "Open Doors" policy. The card I picked up says:

The Open Doors of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin characterize our faith. We throw open these doors in welcome of all who enter, proclaiming the Good News and worshipping together. And through these open we go out into the world for ministry and outreach. These open doors are an integral part of our witness to Jesus Christ. 

In anticipation of Morning Prayer I sat comfortably in the sixth or seventh row. I watched as the church began to wake up: a priest praying quietly in the chancel and two or three (that's all we need right?) people joined her and a second priest on the other side up at the front. I assumed they were deacons or readers and it wasn't until the Psalm (the one I couldn't hear) I realized that small group of people up at the front was the Morning Prayer Service. I was displaced and alone in the pews with the sleeping homeless.

With uncertain steps I left my pew and went closer. I watched as a stream of people walked past me: some stopped to pray at the "Statue of Our Lady", some at the Crucifix, some in the side chapels. I realized more people were using the church in other ways all the while a group of four faithfully recited Morning Prayer II in the Book of Common Prayer. Not quite sure if I was right or wrong, after the second reading I stepped up and joined this band of prayer warriors in the pew. My voice felt strong among them and I was glad I made the move mid-service. The church felt warmer in His words.

After the service ended I thanked the priest and told him I was from Texas. He told me he is "just a volunteer". Again I am reminded that things are not what they seem and the urban church is changing.

There is so little I know.

I sit for a while and think about this in the Chapel of Our Lady of Mercy. I realize the man next to me is crying. I pray for his prayers and for his peace. Someone (a volunteer?) has arranged flowering trees: cherry and pear in the vases surrounding a 1924 polychromed marble statue by Lee Lawrie.

Visitors file past: this church is their ritual: a quiet haven on the way to the other parts of their day. This Urban Church is not the place they congregate on Sundays or even Easter or Christmas: this is on the path of a different life: the one where we need to cry alone in small chapels and touch the feet of Jesus on the cross briefly before we catch the train, sit, even with our iphones in this harbor of quietude and forgiveness.

I walk over and read the plaque.

THE ALTAR IN THIS CHAPEL 

IS OFFERED TO THE GLORY OF GOD 

AND IN LOVING MEMORY OF 

WILLIAM EDWARD JONES 

BORN APRIL 9, 1824

DIED JANUARY 20, 1890 

HIS WIFE SARAH JONES 

BORN JULY 6, 1836

DIED MARCH 19, 1915 

Yesterday was April 8. I think about the life of William Edward Jones and the life of his mother. She, on the eve of having a baby 192 years ago. He, a baby who would become a man and support a church and grow a family that would, at his death give this altar in this chapel in this church steps away and miles away from the electric hum of Times Square. This chapel that I found this morning humble and unaware of such grace and beauty: discovered in a church long loved and cared for by so many.

I consider where Compassion lives in this church: in the Open Doors welcome those who are tired and heavily laden. The congregation takes on a different form here during the week. The people of this church are nomads: stopping in for what they need most: love.

Compassion lives in those doors and in the hands of the architects envisioning the splendor of Sainte-Chappelle for New York City. Compassion lives in the skillful craftsmanship of the designers and artists, woodworkers and painters. Compassion lives in those families who commissioned these works in a church for a time they wouldn't know. Compassion lives in the volunteers and in the leadership dutifully taking measures to care for and protect this Times Square treasure. This church is practicing the kind of compassion taught in the teachings of Christ: this church is love manifest: and it is love that will sustain this harbor for the ages. At the Church of St. Mary the Virgin far from the urgency of a city that never sleeps, there is time for peace, perhaps even a nap, and a place to come and go placidly just as you are.

Compassion on the Hiking Trail

I have been playing “House” this week in Santa Fe, pretending I live here for five starry nights and six bright New Mexico-blue filled days. I brought the boys (8 and 9) out for Spring Break, taking on the 1300-mile drive alone as my husband is back in Dallas working. Due to the nature of my work at the museum, we aren’t together much, the boys and I, and this concentrated time has been precious and unparalleled. We will always have Santa Fe.

In my continuing study of compassion and lately self-compassion, I wanted to give us this time together in the spirit of good health inside and out. Our first stop was Whole Foods, where we filled the basket up with healthy, “whole” foods and made a pledge to cook at the house as much as possible. I am learning from Mark Hyman’s study of eating whole foods and healthy fats, and his books (Blood Sugar Solution, Ten-day Detox, Eat Fat, Get Thin) are the inspiration for our menus.

Our second pledge was to spend as much time as possible off-line and outside. The playground at the Fort Marcy Recreation Center has been our respite and our source of sunshine and all things local. The moms I met compassionately fortified me with dozens of ideas of where to find art and fun for kids in Santa Fe. The boys made new friends we would meet back at the park the next day. I sat for long big-sky hours reading Natalie Goldberg’s latest tome The Great Spring.  And yes, it is.

But it was on the hiking trail where I found real compassion lives: alongside whispering pines and knotty juniper. Real compassion is found where, not surprisingly we are happiest: on the trail. I first noticed the courtesy with which we happy hikers greeted each other, “hello” and “how’s it going” at every passing. We smiled at each other, sympaticos in this glorious human experience of the Bandelier National Monument in the springtime. We made eye contact and smiled often. Hikers stepped off of the trail for us, putting us before them. At the ladders a natural priority was given to those coming down, as it was clear safely descending 140 feet on wooden ladders was other’s first concern. It was beautiful.

I also observed patience amid the cool breezes and quick captures of a Mule Deer or two in the wilderness. It was the protocol that families and groups would each climb up into a cave dwelling to experience it together. The practice is to climb, peer, marvel, experience, imagine, capture with the iphone and then climb back out. This process took several minutes for each small group: complete with little toes seeking the next rung, cameras and coats, and newborn babies in backpacks (yes). The courtesy and patience expressed in that very long line in the sunshine was a marvel to experience. We talked to each other. We shared the union of joy and anticipation. We carefully stepped to one side for those bypassing the cave. It was peaceful and ordered. No one was in a hurry. We were already in the place we needed to be. We were present.

Generosity is also found in abundance on the hiking trails. A mother offered to take our photograph (post 140-foot climb) in the Alcove House. Families offered helping hands to each other as we met in craggy corners. As we crossed the river, one family offered to share a picnic.

On these hikes this week in the Jemez, Little Tesuque and Sangre de Christo ranges, I am learning that compassion lives where courtesy, patience, being present and generous are a natural and intuitive way of being.

What if life was like this? How could we be as happy as we are on the hiking trail, facing each bend with similar anticipation?

Whom will we meet?

What will we see?

Whom will we take care of and who will take care of us?

Compassion lives fully in this experience, the one where we are all experiencing something beautiful and new, challenging and awesome.

And isn’t that life?

Not Mine

I arrived as the season was changing. It was warm in the sun and cool in the shade. I am back in the place where I was a month ago: the place where there was a lake and the lake was drained for maintenance.


Four weeks ago I wrote about transformation and how a lake, drained, reveals all of the things we didn’t know about it: cracks and crevices, mysterious tundra and underwater worlds. It was all there, the cover pulled back for us to see something new, discover something both about the lake I hadn’t known before and, the things I didn’t know about me.


Nature has her way of surprising us. Like the sun at sunrise, the sun that, when the viewer turns away after taking seventeen photographs of the horizon, offers one last burst of miraculous color and light.


Overnight, just this weekend, the heavens poured down in a landmark rain, and, well, the lake is full again. This lake: the one that took over 50 days to drain in January is full overnight. And it is beautiful in a new way. It is miraculous knowing this lake came from the sky, to sit in this basin, at least until the need to drain the lake happens again, or drought happens or more water comes through from the upper creek on the next property. 


This lake came from the sky, and now it reflects the sky. Is that possible?


Like this lake, is it possible to know where compassion comes from? Compassion: a word I’ve been saying in new conversations since late last year. I knew it one-way through studies of the Bodhisattvas: Tara, Avalokitesvara and others. And now I am learning it a different way:

• Looking at the museum team as one with a culture of compassion


• Looking at where compassion lives in our museum and in the Dallas Arts District


• And perhaps most urgently: looking for where compassion lives in me.


Am I really compassion? When I roll my eyes at something I don’t like, or throw off a righteous reaction: one that says, “I am right, and it was really supposed to be this way”. I am not compassion, and I am not right.


Let the eyes that roll be my mindfulness bell that my way is not better or more right than any other way.


Let me learn to study my reactions, the quick ones that are angry and hurtful, and help me see that reacting and worrying and criticizing take compassion out of the air like a hot fire sucking up oxygen.


Last week as part of A Study of Compassion I interviewed Swami Sarveshananda from the Chinmaya Mission. I asked him about where compassion lives and is taught in the teachings of Hinduism. I asked him about concepts such as namaste, environmentalism and the possibility of seeing the other (whether human or the earth) with tremendous respect: so much so we even take ourselves out of it. Na-ma of namaste literally translates from the Sanskrit as “not mine”. As if to say “I see you and all that is in you and I honor all of the light in your being”.


Or in other words, “it’s not about me at all”.


I asked the Swami what he worries about, what keeps him up at night.  He stared back at me squarely and said, “I don’t worry about anything. Worry does not exist. Worry is just an interpretation.” These words fell over me like a hug from an old friend I haven’t seen in twenty years.


For the Swami, and for all of us: worry does not exist. Reacting with hate does not exist: what we think is wrong or upsetting or “the worst thing ever” is really just a moment inside of many moments, and they all fall away with no more or less weight than any other moment in the day.


As I study compassion I want to study this and watch it in me, as I believe these reactions can be my own bell to be a teacher of compassion to myself. I want to focus all of that energy on the other: the person with the light and ideas and possibility. I want to listen.


What if instead of reacting, instead of inhaling sharply or rolling my eyes, I just say with a peaceful heart:


That is a great idea.


Or


Tell me more about it.


And then what happens?


Only the possibility of a new conversation, one that is “not mine” one that is ours and one that reflects the light in the sky that I came from.


And then I will know that, yes, I am compassion.