Fiercely Compassionate ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
October 26, 2025

Times are hard in the city of Chicago these days. Since September 9, when the Department of Homeland Security launched what it named Operation Midway Blitz, over 1000 people have been swept up in arrests. While the official narrative continues to be that this is aimed solely at undocumented immigrants, we know that American citizens and others with valid legal status also get swept up in the raids in Chicago neighborhoods. And as time goes on, the violence aimed at people protesting or even just observing is increasing – we see reports of tear gas and pepper spray being used on protesters.

It would be reasonable for those of us watching around the country to assume that Chicago residents will begin staying in their homes, not venturing out, not trying to show up where ICE is active. It would be reasonable to assume that, but that is not what is happening. According to news reports, people continue to come out of their houses when text alerts warn them that ICE is in the neighborhood. They gather, they blow whistles, they chant and they surround ICE vehicles.

CNN reports that organizers are making up kits to hand out to bystanders that contain orange whistles to blow when they see an ICE operation. “Form a crowd, stay loud,” reads the accompanying instructions. The organizers are planning a “Whistlemania” event for this week to be able to distribute 100,000 kits, and are hoping that this action will catch on in other cities in the United States, such as Portland.

Little Village is a Chicago neighborhood that has a large Latino population. West 26th Street in Little Village has become known for its wide variety of street vendors, selling food. But of course it has become less and less safe for immigrants to be outdoors selling their products, and vendors and foot traffic for local businesses has been diminishing. A group called Cycling x Solidarity noticed. This is a cycling group with a mission of mutual aid. And so they raised money, and now go out to West 26th Street to purchase food so that vendors can sell out quickly and get off the streets.

As CNN reported the story, “Sunday morning, Rick Rosales and a few other volunteers biked up to a woman selling empanadas in the pouring rain. On the street next to her tent, the woman’s young child was sitting in her parked car as she worked. The bikers bought every empanada she had.

‘She was incredibly grateful, very taken by surprise,’ Rosales said. ‘And no sooner did we pack up the bikes with all her goods, she’s already packed up her cooler and tent. It’s cold, it’s raining, it’s early in the morning – she has a child, and now they get to go home.’” (https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/us/chicago-ice-raids-resistance-efforts)

After buying out a vendor, the bikers then pass out the food to homeless encampments and shelters.

“It’s cold, it’s raining, it’s early in the morning – she has a child, and now they get to go home.”

Let’s pause for just a second to allow the deep compassion of that statement to fill our hearts. Can you imagine how you would feel, standing in the cold rain, worrying that if you’re grabbed by federal agents your child will have no way to get home?

This month we have talked a lot about compassion. We’ve learned how to better define it, and differentiate it from empathy. We’ve talked about how learning to recognize the deep connections of all life helps us to dissolve any sense of separation, and helps us to become more compassionate. We talked about how living compassionately is a gift – that in extending compassion to others we gain more than we give. And today, we are looking at how compassion can move us toward justice, toward action, toward protecting those who are more vulnerable than we are.

One thing struck me in the stories coming out of Chicago, and Portland too, and that is the absence of fear. People grabbing their phones and running outside to confront ICE agents. People moving toward street vendors to help, not avoiding them. People dancing in absurd inflatable costumes. And people such as yourselves who last Saturday went public with your love of your country and your refusal to give up our democratic ideals.

Let me also say that fear of armed thugs is a legitimate response; there would be no shame in being afraid. But over and over we are seeing people responding fiercely and fearlessly to protect other people.

The environmental activist and author Joanna Macy, who died this past July, offered this definition of fierce compassion:

“Compassion boils down to not being afraid of the suffering of your world or of yourself. It involves being open to what you’re feeling about that suffering (grief, fear, rage, overwhelm) and brave enough to experience it… You can’t heal something you’re afraid to get near. Compassion is what impels you to act for the sake of the larger whole—or put more accurately, it is the whole acting through you.” (https://www.yogajournal.com/teach/what-radical-compassion-means-to-author-and-activist-joanna-macy/)

Two things struck me about this passage. First, of course, was Joanna Macy’s determination to not be afraid to confront suffering. So often we look the other way; we close our hearts, we pretend to not see the homeless person, or the victims of atrocities in Gaza. But compassion, she told us, means to look without fear, to keep our hearts open.

The other important message in Joanna’s passage is how compassion leads us outside of ourselves, leads us, as she put it, ‘to act for the sake of the whole’. Her definition of compassion asks us to reach beyond helping individuals, to recognize that our compassionate actions affect everything. If we all are, as Jane Goodall and the Dalai Lama experienced, completely interconnected, then each action we take benefits the wider world.

Most of the time when we speak of compassion, we use language of opening: of opening our eyes and ears so that we can see what others are experiencing, and opening our hearts to make room to feel what others are feeling. Active compassion contains a strong ‘yes’ – a response that says ‘yes’ to other people, to sharing other people’s thoughts and feelings.

But compassion also contains a strong ‘no’ as well. It is the ‘no’ born out of courage and conviction, the ‘no’ that says ‘here is where I draw a line’, or ‘here is where I speak up’, and ‘this is what I will not accept.’ As we heard in our reading, Cameron Trimble calls this ‘no’ a sacred refusal: a refusal to shut down and retreat into numbness, a refusal to look away.

This refusal is the ‘no’ of fierce compassion. It is with this ‘no’ that compassion transforms into courage, and can transform us to become people who will take action.

We need to cultivate all our courage in order to sustain our compassion these days. The people currently in power don’t want us to feel courageous. And so when people ask me what I think is accomplished with all the rallies and protests, I respond, “Courage is contagious.” We need to see each other showing up, saying both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ with each other – yes to caring, and no to fascism.

There’s something else besides courage we need to grow our fierce compassion, and that is hope. If we are paying attention, we see that there is much to give us hope; that in fact we don’t have to look far to see compassion in action these days.

Where do I see hope, and compassion in action?

Let’s start with ourselves, and Socktober. Your eyes and hearts are open: you see a need every year for the most basic and overlooked clothing items, and you work to fill it.

Elsewhere in Gloucester two other organizations have been organizing coat drives – coats and hats and boots – to make sure that everyone has what they need for the winter months. Hearts are open to families unable to do much for their children for Christmas, and a toy drive is underway. One of these volunteer organizations is also soliciting gifts for elders in nursing homes. All around Cape Ann, volunteers have stepped up quietly to help out our immigrant population through mutual aid, and even bringing children safely to school. These people inspire me every day. I also think of all the local non-profits who protect the vulnerable and try to make their lives better: the Open Door, the Grace Center, Action, Inc., Pathways for Children, Wellspring House and Younity among them. Thinking of all this activity, this compassion in action, offers me hope. Despite all the loud, coarse, and angry speech around us, we know that the vast majority of us have not lost our compassion and our humanity.

I will share my growing concern about hunger, however. On November 1, funding will run out for the federal food assistance program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The exact number of Americans who depend on these benefits varies, but it’s in the many millions. If a new federal budget isn’t approved, the impact on peoples’ lives is going to be enormous. Here on Cape Ann, the Open Door is likely to be stretched to its absolute limit to provide enough food to make up the difference. This is a moment that is calling all of us. What can we all do to support the Open Door right now?

My friends, if we look we will see that there is compassion in action all around us. And even more is needed. Our work in these coming weeks and months is to continue to strengthen our courage and our resolve, to meet this moment by becoming fiercely compassionate, by knowing when to say ‘yes’ and when to say ‘no’.

Meeting this moment is challenging. We will need one another to do it, to gather our courage, to use our voices, to help find creative solutions to the problems the vulnerable among us are facing. The good news is that we are not alone.

I leave you with the words of Cameron Trimble: “When we reach for one another with care—when we peacefully protest, offer a gentle word, hold silence with someone in pain—we resist the Empire’s logic of separation. We bear witness to a deeper truth: that love, in its fiercest form, often shows up as gentleness.

When the world numbs, staying tender is a revolutionary act.”

May you be fierce. May you be gentle. May you be compassionate.