Well. LOL :) This is going to be long. I know it already. 

First, I think compassion becoming more abstract by the year CAN and WILL make our compassion cease to be truly compassionate if we don't make some changes, not in our society necessarily, but in our own individual lives. Before I go into my personal experience here's something I read a couple weeks ago in Jim Palmer's "Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Number Christianity" (the context is he is talking about tithing):

"This process implied to the receiver that the church (as an organization) knows better to do with your tithe or gift than you do....The method also complicated the process of getting the gift to the person in need. The giver and receiver were not able to express the reason they gave or their thanks for receiving the gift, both of which God uses as part of the process of transforming both the giver and the receiver. Giving to whom God directs, when God directs, was less likely since people were conditioned to think of giving as an act of organizational involvement" (Palmer, p.29).  You gotta read this book, Kristin! ;)


It seems to me that that totally, easily applies to giving through ANY organization or "middle man giver." My father-in-law says that people get stupider and stupider about nature, the further they get away from the land. An example of this is Sacramento big-shots deciding to protect a tiny little fish that is "endangered" by not allowing water to go to thousands of farms in our area, and thereby hurting not just the farming community but the state and even the world. A tiny fish! And perhaps this same "distance creating dead brain cells phenomenon" applies to giving to people who need it, as well. The further we get from the need, the more hands our gifts pass through, the more impersonal it becomes. 

O.k. so I'm going to get personal now! :) I live in a tiny town I'll call "E". We live on a street I'll call "W." The north side of W Street is houses and the south side of the street is the elementary school for one whole block. The next block of the same street is the Presbyterian church we attend. My little family lives at one end of W Street in a house we built a year ago on property belonging to my inlaws, who live next door to us in the house my father-in-law grew up in, as did my husband. A little white gate separates our yard and their yard. It gets better! While my father-in-law was growing up in the house next door, my mother-in-law was growing up in a house 4 doors down, where her father still lives. Both families, as well as most of the other families on the street, attended the Presbyterian church, so it was logical for my in-laws to get married in the church...after all, both THEIR parents had, as well. And we did the same. 

Meanwhile, don't forget, the elementary school is across the street from all this. My husband's grandfather was the principal for many years. My husband's great aunt on the other side of the family taught kindergarten there for many years. My mother-in-law is now a first grade teacher there and my daughter, Emily, was in her class last year. This year my daughter is in Mrs. P's class. Mr. P grew up on this street and got in trouble with my mother-in-law's little brother and my father-in-law's little brother. When Mr. and Mrs. P got married, my husband was the ring-bearer in their wedding. Later my husband worked for Mr. P during the summers. 


My husband's grandfather would most certainly need to be in a rest home, except for the fact that my mother-in-law and a few of her sisters take turns coming in and getting him dressed in the morning, making his breakfast, coming in the evening to make dinner and helping him get into bed. They can do that because they live down the street from him. My daughter, Emily, walks across the street to his house each afternoon (he's her great-grandfather) and they watch PBS while he feeds her cookies and she shouts things at him he can't hear! We sit in a certain pew at church each week because...well, we just do!

So basically what I'm saying is...we live in a small town that is like nothing most people have ever experienced. We live with, shop at The Big Potato Market (yes, that's the actual name) with, and attend church with the same people, many of whose families grew up in the same manner as my husband and in-laws. This is a place most people would assume doesn't exist anymore. We know there's tiny towns that people stay in for generations, but assume they are all in the Ozarks or something. But this is Central California. Our town borders a very large city, in fact. But somehow, some way, it has endured.

That's the pretty side of the story. The not-so-pretty side of the story is that we are one of probably a couple hundred "middle-class white families" who live comfortably here in our town, but there are far more extremely poor Hispanic families who live in conditions ranging from "poor" to absolute squalor. Emily is one of three Caucasian children in her classroom. Many of the poorer Hispanic families are here because of the farming in our area. They have found work as farmworkers and laborers, which of course makes the population quite transient, as well. But yet, our church is 99% white. We sent a team of high schoolers to do the annual missions trip to Mexico during Easter break, while people suffer just around the corner. Our church has started a "Hispanic Service" that is poorly attended but exists. We have "outreach" programs and events (Breakfast with Santa, Pumpkin Party, etc.) every year and teams of people walk around our town and distribute fliers beforehand. We get a pretty good turn out. We have an Awana program at our church that draws community kids who don't attend our church, partially because we have a $1 dinner beforehand and parents can leave kids ages 4-12 for 2.5 hours and know they'll be fed and cared for.

But damn it, we tithe. We rarely have more than 100 people on a Sunday morning and yet our tithes keep an old, drafty Presbyterian church building (steeple and all!) running, a full-time pastor, a part-time youth pastor, a secretary and numerous ministries and programs fully funded. After reading Jim Palmer's book (the one I quoted from above), I have been thinking about our sweet little church with its 100-year-old history differently. I'm not going to quit going. It's a freaking family reunion every Sunday! But I am feeling uncomfortable with the number of hands my gifts and tithes pass through....and why. So much need is in our very backyard (literally) and yet we (in Jim Palmer's words) "drive right past them on my way to church (Palmer, p.33)."

So what is my point? Hmmm....not sure. I guess I just wanted to say that even in a town that is wierdly small and connected, there is a disconnect, an abstract quality, about my "acts of compassion." We have and will continue to give directly to individuals and not just through the conduit of our church. But I'm not sure that's enough. What if we try NOT tithing, or perhaps only tithing a limited amount, and intentionally spending the rest of what we would have tithed on meeting needs directly...from one hand to another. I think that's the only SURE way of preventing compassion from being abstract and ulimately heartless.