The Compassion
Quest
Trystan Owain Hughes
SPCK £9.99
(978-0-281-06825-8)
Church Times Bookshop £9 (Use code CT771
)
TRYSTAN Owain Hughes's first
book, Finding Hope and Meaning in Suffering (Lent Books, 4
February 2011), was about the inward spiritual journey, and
focused on the individual. His second, The Compassion
Quest, redresses the balance, and is much more
outward-looking.
The main message I took from
this follow-up work can be summed up as the importance of seeing
our interconnectedness with the rest of creation. This leads us to
view it with compassion rather than from a self-centred point of
view.
Hughes quotes Hildegard of
Bingen in his second chapter: "There is nothing created that does
not contain a ray of God's radiance, not foliage or seed or flower
or any other beautiful creation." This idea underlies everything
else he writes about. God has used creation as the primary way in
which he reveals himself, and relates to us. Everything in nature
discloses something of God. We are, therefore, poorer if we take it
for granted and see ourselves as disconnected from it.
Christians too often possess
a dualistic view, in which animals are seen as qualitatively
different from us; in the human view, they become nothing more than
animated machines made for our own use. Instead, Hughes wishes to
encourage his readers to see ourselves as part of the whole, always
viewing life in all its forms with reverence and compassion.
Compassion must be extended
towards human beings, too. He reminds us that we all have the
capacity for evil; and our tendency to label those who have done
obvious wrong - for instance, Myra Hindley - rather than reflect
Christ's dying for all assumes that it is only for those we count
good enough to merit salvation.
There is much food for
thought in this book. Throughout, the author uses examples from
films, books, and his own life to illustrate his points. He
provides an extensive bibliography- eight pages of it, in a book of
only 120.
This reverence for the
created order is, of course, nothing new, although we have in
recent times perhaps given it less attention than it merits. This
sacramental and incarnational aspect of the natural world is
affirmed widely in the Old Testament: "The earth is the Lord's and
all that is in it; the world, and those who dwell therein" (Psalm
24).
The Revd Sarah Hillman is Priest-in-Charge of Puddletown,
Tolpuddle, and Milborne with Dewlish, in Dorset.
