"When our protests against war, segregation and social injustice do not reach beyond the level of a reaction, then our indignation becomes self-righteous, our hope for a better world degenerates into a desire for quick results and our generosity is soon exhausted by disappointments. Only when our mind has descended into our heart can we expect a lasting response to well up from our innermost self.
... If any criticism can be made of the sixties (peace protest movement), it is not that protest was meaningless but that it was not deep enough, in the sense that it was not rooted in the solitude of the heart. When only our minds and hands work together we quickly become dependent on the results of our own action and tend to give up when they do not materialize.
In the solitude of the heart we can truly listen to the pains of the world because there we can recognize them not as strange and unfamiliar pains but as pains that are indeed our own. That we can see that what is most universal is most personal and that indeed nothing human is strange to us.
There we can feel that the cruel reality of history is indeed the reality of the human heart, our own included, and that to protest asks, first of all, for a confession of our own participation in the human condition. There we can indeed response.
... because out of an inner solidarity with our fellow humans the first attempts to alleviate these pains can come forth. It is this inner solidarity which prevents self-righteousness and makes compassion possible." -- Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out
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