Compassion is a cornerstone value of every major religion in the world – Christianity, the Muslim Faith, Judaism and Buddhism – yet we do not live in a compassionate world, and humans will routinely invoke their faith and routinely practice cruelty and worse. It is one of the great contradictions of faith – people seem to want Gods in their lives, but reject their teachings and commandments. It does not seem to be human nature to be compassionate.

Compassion means empathy, the ability to understand and identify with the pain and suffering of others. In our culture, we live in two different realities – compassion for animals is almost universal, despite their abuse and mistreatment. Compassion for people has become so controversial an entire political culture has evolved around the idea that we should not practice it, that the weak, the poor and ill are to blame for their troubles, our function is to get out of their way and let them heal themselves. I wonder what Jesus would have said to that, it is the very reason he tried to storm the greedy and remote priests of the Temple.

This growing ethos around the animal world is almost precisely the opposite of our indifference to humans – animals are sacred, helpless, they need an elaborate system of support and compassion, they need rescue and re-homing, no-kill shelters and facilities, elaborate networks of people to care for them, foster them, re-home them, our concern for them seems to be as boundless as our concern for our poorer brethen a marginal, even receding idea. There is no national rescue network for people.

Why this difference, this divide? I am thinking about compassion today as the temperature plunges below zero and we think of the donkeys and the sheep and chickens out in the night, and we have been bringing Flo and Minnie into the farmhouse at night. They could easily survive in their sheltered spots in the barn or the woodshed, but I am not comfortable with them being outside in this cold and snow (curiously, Maria is not as uncomfortable as I am, she would probably leave them outside, the believes in the life of the barn cat.) What has happened? Have I changed and softened, as many people keep telling me? Perhaps, but it is not so simple. Compassionate grows like a garden, it needs constant watering and weeding.

My own spiritual work – and my marriage, my relationship with Maria, my  breakdown, my experience with Simon, Rocky and Red especially – has led me to a deeper understanding of compassion and its true meaning.  Compassion does not come in a single package, at least for me, it comes in many. For Simon, compassion was bringing him to Bedlam Farm, nursing him back to life. For Rocky, it was euthanizing him, sparing him so much stress and another winter. For Red, it was accepting the idea that God wanted me to have him, and to commit to giving him the life he deserves. Compassion is not one thing, it is many different things, it means many different things at different times. For me, compassion meant going to see the farmer who neglected Simon to cruelly and trying to understand what had happened to him.

I think the most compassionate thing I ever did for Rose was putting her down, this proud creature was going to pieces. Yet for many, compassion for animals means keeping them alive at all costs by any means. A shelter worker and friend told me her idea of compassion was keeping her animals alive as best she could for as long as she could, a kind of empathy I relate to. A neighbor and farmer told me he shot his dying 14-year-old border collie in the head to spare him the trauma of dying on some stranger’s linoleum floor. It was, he said, the most compassionate thing he could think to do for his beloved dog and companion.

As a writer and animal lover, I have always been fascinated by the endemic hatred and rage that seems to shroud many people who profess the love of animals. It is one of the most common things I hear in my work: I love all animals, I don’t like people very much. The most vicious and unfeeling messages I ever get all come from people professional a great love of animals, even as they seek to wound and attack humans. I see from these messages that many of these people do not know what love or compassion means.

How can this be? It is easier to love animals than people because they can’t speak or disappoint us? Because they are dependent up on it? Are they a good place to hide our rage and disappointment?

I have thought about this and written about it, it is a fascinating thing to me,  and this is where it has taken me so far, and I hope to take it further:

I do not believe it is possible to love animals and hate people. Love is not compartmentalized, we have it or we don’t. For me, it is one and the same thing. Learning to love animals has taught me how to love people. Learning to be compassionate with my animals is showing me how to be compassionate with people. I do not know an angry person who has a happy and healthy dog. I do not know an angry person who hates people who knows how to love a dog or a cat. Or even what love is. Compassion, I suppose, is learning to empathize with people we don’t like, with ideas we are not comfortable with.

I don’t believe compassion is selective to species and circumstance. Hatred and fury does not hide behind the love of a dog or cat. A relative told me no terrorist should ever have a fair trial, they should all be executed immediately. Do you only believe in fair trials for good people?, I asked, for people we like? Yes, she said.

Compassion and empathy are always evolving for me, I think I am just beginning to understand them, although I have always been drawn to the idea of them, even when I can’t feel them. Tonight, I am watching two cats prowl around our living room, hop in and off of furniture, reach up and try and steal our food. The dogs are uneasy, moving around, they have not been outside much and are trying to adjust to their new housemates.

I think of the cold outside, and I am grateful to be able to offer these animals warmth and shelter, (that is Flo above, on her new cat stand)  it widens and warms the inside of my heart, shows me the small steps towards empathy and not just for them.  For you and well.

More and more, I am working to do the same for people, learning to do things for people, to think of them.  in my own way, and without sharing this with the world. Compassion is a virus, it spreads.