Every spring I head to the garden center and buy heavy bags of composted manure. Black gold, they call it. I heft it around my yard and pile it in mounds around my perennial herbs, lay it deep on my garden bed, tuck it in around the emerging heads of asparagus. I find the annual ritual satisfying, savoring my small part in the much larger process of life. The compost nourishes the soil, which in turn nourishes the plants, which in turn nourish people, and other critters. Thich Nhat Hahn teaches, “No mud, no lotus,” and I say “No crap, no crop.” Kneeling in manure, hands dirty, is not an inviting image, but there is satisfaction in this work. Wherever there is rich soil, something has been broken down with help from the sun, rain, and all types of microorganisms to make nutrients available for new life. While I can’t control the weather or stink bugs, I can choose to work the soil and cultivate my garden. Likewise, wherever human life flourishes, suffering has been broken down by moments of warm-hearted presence and connection to create joy and hope even in the middle of pain. While I can’t control the inevitable ups and downs of life, I can choose to cultivate compassion. In The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, “You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work.” (2:47) Sometimes we lose everything and sometime we receive unexpected abundance. That’s life. The joy is in the work itself.

Where I live in Washington, DC, not much grows during the winter months and my garden lies fallow. Sometimes the weather is mild. Sometimes the region is shut down by snowfalls that are measured in feet. This past year, however, DC was shut down by a different phenomenon. Getting news just before Christmas that my husband and others were furloughed due to the US federal government shutdown was a horrible way to start the holidays and a new year. It wasn’t a surprise, but it still felt like a dump of un-composted manure. As days stretched into weeks and weeks approached the month mark, the consequences expanded and deepened individually, locally, nationally, and even internationally. Close to home, the stress and suffering were palpable. No one knew when the shutdown would end or how long individuals and families could continue to manage without the income, some of whom were required to continue working without pay. Even after back-pay legislation was passed by Congress, there was no sense of when it would happen and if it would help the larger number of federal contractors who were affected, yet had no such promise. It didn’t. For them, many of whom live paycheck-to-paycheck, each day furloughed was a day’s wages lost for good.

Yet amazingly, parallel to the shutdown was an outpouring of goodwill from friends and strangers across the country. Restaurants offered free meals to affected workers. Banks delayed mortgage payments, interest and penalty-free. Donations poured into food banks. Social media, local government, and newspaper websites became gathering places for so that these opportunities could be easily shared and found. (Be inspired here.) Even while circumstances constricted, many people chose to open their eyes, see the real consequences on people’s lives, and do something. I was reminded that we always have a choice in how we will respond to suffering – our own and others’ – and that how we respond matters. As Kate Braestrup, a UU minister and chaplain to Maine game wardens, observed, “[T]he question isn’t whether we’re going to have to do hard, awful things, because we are. And we all are. The question is whether we have to do them alone.” Witnessing the with-ness of compassion, I saw the burning stench of suffering, compost into rich soil, fertile with possibilities for connection, gratitude, and shared common humanity.

On an early morning walk in the middle of the shutdown, Harry Potter’s final golden snitch came to mind: I open at the close. During my teacher training for Compassion Cultivation Training© (CCT™), one of the founding faculty, Erika Rosenberg, linked these words to Tonglen, a meditation practice of taking in the suffering of oneself and others on the in-breath, and offering presence, compassion, and succor on the out-breath. The words captured and challenged me. How could I open at this close? The close of minds, the close of the government, the close of my heart in frustration, anger, and fear? As I walked holding the question; the words of another tradition came to mind, “The Spirit [Breath] of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound…to comfort all that mourn…to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” (Isaiah 61:1,3 KJV)

I thought of an upcoming session of CCT I would soon teach and a generous friend’s offer to sponsor scholarships if the need ever arose. I could open in this and make the class available at no charge to people who, just like me, were affected by the government furlough. My friend was delighted by and fully supportive of the idea, as was the owner of center where I was scheduled to teach. I looked for ways to share the news broadly. The author of the above-linked USA Today article opened my email request and responded with enthusiasm, kindly listing information about the class and significantly increasing its visibility. Several individuals reached out, both furloughed government workers and regular enrollees, and the class filled up with a diverse group from all over the DC metro area. Thankfully, the government shutdown ended just before we began. The class remained full and not one student dropped out, even those who were driving over an hour each way in DC traffic to attend after a long day at work.

While the session started with a sense of reserved curiosity, connections were woven step-by-step, week-by-week as we moved through the CCT curriculum and exercises. After class on Week Four – Step 3b, Loving-kindness for Oneself, one of the students approached and asked, “Are all CCT classes like this?” I responded, “What do you mean? Like what?” She continued, “Well, I have had a seated meditation practice for a while and have taken other classes, but I’ve never felt like this in a group before. I have only known these people for a few weeks, but they feel like family and I find myself noticing strangers outside of class and being filled with warmth for them, too.” I knew what she meant and replied that, yes, in my experience, a deep sense of connection was often fostered among participants in CCT which naturally expanded into other areas of life, and that preliminary research seemed to support this felt experience.

This question was the springboard for check-in the following week, Embracing Common Humanity. I asked if this observation resonated for the others. They whole-heartedly agreed that it did and I wondered aloud, “Isn’t this hopeful? With a few exceptions, we don’t know very much about each other and haven’t known each other very long. We don’t know each other’s political leanings, religious or non-religious beliefs, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, professional background, or where we live but we care about each other deeply. Our time spent together and these practices have nurtured connection, compassion, and care between us. If a group of diverse strangers can do this in just a few weeks, it gives me hope for DC and the world. If we can do this, so can others.” We continued to cultivate compassion, kneeling in manure, hands dirty, and, in turn, harvested sweet joy together. For the last few weeks, many participants braved rush hour to meet for dinner before class so that they could simply have more time with each other.

Over 250 years ago, the French philosopher and author Voltaire wrote the satire Candide in response to the suffering he saw magnified by political tumult and natural disaster. One of the most famous lines of all Western literature is found at the very end of the book – “Il faut cultiver notre jardin.” We must cultivate our garden. I have understood this as meaning that in the end, the only real choice we have is to cultivate our own lives, hearts, and minds. As Sharon Salzberg wrote more recently, “There is the situation and there is everything we bring to it. So we must take responsibility for our mind.” (Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, 94) Viktor Frankl observed in the context of extreme suffering, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Life gives us many chances to open at the close and let loving-kindness and compassion nourish the joy of connection. I could not have imagined the personal and collective impact of the choice by many people to open during the shutdown. The suffering of isolation, fear, and anger was transformed by the sharing of personal stories, hard questions, varied voices of insight, and belly-shaking laughter. We learned that “in ways [we] will never truly know, all of our lives are supported in many ways big and small by countless other people, including those we consider to be friends or strangers. And that in ways each of us may never know, we too, play the same supportive role in the lives of countless others,” (Thupten Jinpa, Compassion Cultivation Training Audio Meditation Week 4, Embracing Common Humanity). Savoring our small part in the much larger process of life, we found joy in the work itself. In an unpredictable world in which so much is beyond our control, there is a fair measure of peace and comfort in the truth that as we cultivate compassion, suffering is transformed into beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.