In The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen talks about 'pastoral conversation' as a means of encounter with people who face fear, uncertainty, rejection, isolation.  Henri Nouwen saw, and experienced in his life — a life lived as a Catholic priest — the condition of a suffering world, the condition of a suffering generation, the condition of a suffering man, the condition of a suffering minister.  Within this suffering, infectious condition, he saw the call to compassion, and healing …. a call he confronted by making his own wounds available as a source of healing.

If we search deeply into the soul of Nouwen's teachings — as the wounded healer — we discover that the framework for pastoral conversation — at the everyday level … within the hearts of parents, workers, teachers, caregivers — is simply relationship:  sacrificial relationships that seek to provide "a deep human encounter in which a man [or woman] is willing to put his own faith and doubt, his own hope and despair, his own light and darkness at the disposal of others who want to find a way through their confusion and touch the solid core of life."² 

Nouwen reminds us that "Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man."³

"…Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that men [women] feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty that the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses.  Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes or hatred in their bitter mouths.  When they kill, we know that we could have done it;  when they give life, we know that we can do the same.  For a compassionate man [woman] nothing human is alien:  no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying."⁴

Our common humanity, which circumscribes all nations of the world, creates a universal bond … bringing 'another's experiences' — whether tragic or joyful — into our own individual, personal space.  A space that we often protect with rigid barriers and closed doors; but also a space that is transparent to one another … because we share, together, the same emotional, and existential, foundation.  We have all held — jointly, universally — the same experiences of fear, isolation, loneliness, despair, pain, suffering: building blocks of our broken humanity.  And yet, these experiences, together with joy, love, happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction — when revealed to one another, in compassion — unite the man and the woman, the Hindu and the Buddhist, the Jew and the Muslim.   Compassion provides the rope — the personal binding — that joins my human experience with another … with yours'.  For it is through compassion that we see another's needs as a reflection of our own needs; their weaknesses as a parallel of my weaknesses; their failures as a projection of my failures.  Compassion stands on the top of our human ladder … like a beacon of authority that directs the well-being behind relationship, interaction, encounter, and understanding.

"Compassion must become the core and even the nature of authority."⁵

" … compassion is authority because it does not tolerate the pressures of the in-group, but breaks through the boundaries between languages and countries, rich and poor, educated and illiterate.  This compassion pulls people away from the fearful clique into the large world where they can see that every human face is the face of a neighbor."⁶