“Of course, the reason he enchanted everybody, adults and youngsters alike, was that, as with any good pastor or patrician, Juan Salvado was such a good listener, patiently absorbing everything that was said to him, from observations about the weather to secrets of the heart, he never once interrupted.” This is how Tom Michell describes his friend’s ability to listen well, “patiently absorbing” what others shared with him. The ability to absorb people’s words and emotions strikes me as an adequate illustration of empathy. But before I discuss the meaning of empathy, I briefly reflect on Michell and his friend, Juan Salvado.
In his 2015 book The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird, Michell shares the story of how his life crossed paths with a penguin (see also the 2024 film “The Penguin Lessons”). In 1975, Michell, a 23-year-old Englishman, was hired as an assistant master at a prestigious boarding school in Argentina. During a weekend trip to Uruguay, he encountered a tragic ecological disaster: hundreds of oil-soaked dead penguins lying along the shoreline. But Michell discovered that “one valiant bird was alive, a single surviving soul struggling amidst all that death.” After weighing his options, he decided to rescue the bird. With great effort, Michell cleaned the penguin — but when he tried to return it to the ocean, the penguin refused to leave his side. The book recounts how Michell smuggled the bird into Argentina and how the penguin became a saving presence for many at the college, including María, the dorm’s housekeeper, and Diego, a shy 13-year-old boy whose life took a positive turn after his encounter with the penguin.
Relevant penguin lessons
Several of the “penguin lessons” are relevant to the work of ministers and people of faith. Here, I highlight two of them. First, Michell noted the inevitable tension between the experiences of saving and being saved. Initially, while reading the Spanish edition of Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Juan Salvador Gaviota), Michell decided that Juan Salvador – John Savior – was an appropriate name for the rescued penguin. Later, his colleagues suggested that a more accurate name would be Juan Salvado (John Saved). From then on, the penguin was known as Juan Salvado, although Michell noted that on formal occasions the penguin was still called Juan Salvador.
And when, by God’s grace, we can accompany someone in their pain and suffering, often we discover that we, too, are cared for.
Savior (salvador) or saved (salvado)? The penguin’s two names point to intertwined aspects of caregiving. People of faith can help heal and integrate people’s stories of pain because we experience in our own lives the healing presence of Christ’s Spirit. And when, by God’s grace, we can accompany someone in their pain and suffering, often we discover that we, too, are cared for. In pastoral theology, we refer to this principle as mutuality: the idea that even though caregiving focuses on the needs of the care seeker, caregivers are inevitably affected by the caregiving process, often in positive and life-giving ways.
A second “penguin lesson” relevant to people of faith concerns the ability to listen empathically. This gift is reflected in both Michell and Juan Salvado. Michell recounted that many people visited Juan Salvado to talk to him. Interestingly, Michell saw in the penguin a sort of religious figure, first comparing the penguin’s ability to listen with that of “any good pastor” and then noting that the penguin “resembled nothing so much as an elderly, diminutive, genial Victorian country parson.” What made Juan Salvado a superb listener was his ability to “patiently absorb” what people shared with him. Michell underscored three skills that made Juan Salvado a good listener. First, the penguin’s head movement, alternately focusing with one eye and one ear, gave the impression of his “undivided attention” to whatever was said. Second, visitors could count on Juan Salvado’s absolute discretion. Third, although the penguin could not respond with words, “his eyes gave him all the lucid eloquence of a great orator.” For example, when a student sought Juan Salvado’s advice regarding a girl he liked, he felt that the penguin clearly encouraged him to ask her out, and he left gratefully knowing what to do.
Though Michell’s memoir focused on the penguin’s lessons for him and other humans, Michell also demonstrated his ability to listen to others, including his friend, Juan Salvado. Throughout the book, Michell inserted brief annotations of what he imagined the penguin was telling him. Many years after he left the country, Michell returned to Argentina for a visit, including a tour of the college. As he observed the place where he spent time with Juan Salvado, he recounted: “I paused for a few moments as I looked at the terrace where once I had spent so much time, and I imagined Juan Salvado’s sparkling eyes as he said, You’ve been [gone] a long time! I was wondering what had happened to you. What have you been doing, amigo mio … what took you so long to come back?” Decades after his encounter with Juan Salvado, Michell was still able to attune himself to his penguin friend’s inner world.
The Penguin Lessons offers remarkable illustrations of the power of empathy. A young person can imagine a penguin’s inner world and respond to it with compassion. In ways that defy understanding, the penguin gave so much back to him. Michell concluded that although Juan Salvado demanded much care, ultimately what Michell received from the penguin was simply invaluable. As he put it, “Like so many people I met on my travels in South America, Juan Salvado had so little, but gave so much.” Michell is hopeful that one day “we will be able to confirm that many animals have the capacity to understand and process information to a far more sophisticated degree than opinion currently holds.” Pastoral theologians, aware that caregiving entails learning from and caring for all creation, would agree with Michell.
Empathy defined
…empathy requires imagination to picture the other’s emotional landscape in our minds and hearts.
In the 2006 book The Practice of Pastoral Care: A Postmodern Approach (revised in 2015), pastoral theologian Carrie Doehring explained that “empathy involves imaginatively stepping into another person’s emotional experience while remaining aware of and anchored in one’s own emotional state.” In light of Michell’s memoir, we might expand this definition to include other living creatures. In any case, empathy requires imagination to picture the other’s emotional landscape in our minds and hearts. In other words, when we practice empathy, we try to imagine the other person’s feelings, thoughts and experiences. To better understand empathy, it helps to distinguish it from sympathy.
Sympathy – relating to others based on common experience – can be helpful in our daily interactions and in spiritual caregiving. Although having a penguin as a pet may be a strange experience for us, having another pet might give us a good idea of what it would be like to have a penguin as a pet. Still, we would need to be careful not to assume that a shared experience (in this case, having a pet) is enough for us to fully understand the uniqueness of a person’s relationship with a particular pet.
While sympathy presupposes shared experience, empathy involves imagining an unfamiliar experience. To understand having a penguin as a pet, most of us would need to exercise a great deal of empathy. Because empathy entails entering unknown territory, the cognitive process is more complex and requires significant effort. The goal of empathy is to achieve a fuller understanding of another person’s circumstances.
I do not believe we can fully and perfectly understand another person. Carl Rogers, the American psychologist who developed client-centered therapy, indicated that the therapist’s “unconditional positive regard” toward a client is an aspiration. In other words, despite their best efforts, a therapist may not be able to maintain the same positive regard for all their clients. The same insight applies to empathy. When we imaginatively step into another person’s world, we aspire to understand them, but our understanding will likely be imperfect. For this reason, in our daily conversations (and pastoral caregiving), we do well to check in with the other person to verify the accuracy of our understanding. If I were to have a conversation with Michell after reading his book, I might say, “It seems like writing this memoir gave closure to your relationship with Juan Salvado. Am I correct?” Michell could then confirm my insight, nuance it or correct it.
The goal of empathy is to achieve a fuller understanding of another person’s circumstances.
The first part of Doehring’s definition of empathy involves “imaginatively stepping into another person’s emotional experience.”
The second part of the definition is equally important: Empathy means entering the other person’s world “while remaining aware of and anchored in one’s own emotional state.”
For us to remain present with the other – without disengaging or fusing – our empathy requires self-empathy.
In other words, while courageously imagining ourselves in the other person’s shoes, we must stay aware of our own shoes: our own feelings, thoughts and experiences. After all, listening empathically is a delicate process. Listening carefully to someone else’s experiences can trigger memories from our own past, leading us to withdraw from or emotionally merge with the other person. The other person’s story might feel too painful to endure, or it may sound so familiar that we might experience an intense desire to find immediate solutions, potentially leading to our overinvolvement. For us to remain present with the other – without disengaging or fusing – our empathy requires self-empathy.
In her 2015 book Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel, and Pastoral Care, pastoral theologian Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger describes self-empathy as the ability to “attune ourselves inwardly with an attitude of caring attentiveness toward our own feelings and needs.” Importantly, Hunsinger reminds us that “we cannot remain openhearted toward others unless we know how to metabolize our own pain.” In other words, embodying empathy requires practicing self-empathy alongside it.
On any given day, if we find ourselves having difficulty listening well and embodying empathy, this struggle might indicate that we need to attend to our own feelings and needs. As I often remind my students, self-empathy does not mean that we must achieve complete healing or integration of our stories of pain and trauma before we can care for others. If that were the case, we would still be waiting to begin our ministries. As Henri Nouwen pointed out in 1979 in The Wounded Healer, at any given time, we are “both the wounded minister and the healing minister.”
Empathy as an invitation to connect across differences
Empathy is an important quality to develop, especially during periods of steep division. Empathy entails suspending our prejudices and assumptions about people by listening to them all the way. In the 2024 book I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times, journalist Mónica Guzmán describes listening “all the way” as the gift of being listened to until “your meaning is completely clear to another human being.” I would nuance Guzmán’s point by emphasizing that the ability to understand others entirely is an aspiration. It does not always happen, despite our best intentions. Importantly, Guzmán explains that listening to understand fully (or as fully as possible) does not mean letting go of our convictions. Imaginatively stepping into other people’s worlds does not entail renouncing our core values and beliefs as people of faith. Instead, we prioritize kindness to explore the complex landscape of another person’s world.
Empathy entails suspending our prejudices and assumptions about people by listening to them all the way.
Though empathy is a valuable virtue to develop, like other virtues, it has its limits. A faithful response to human suffering requires us to take additional actions. Doehring emphasizes compassion in developing appropriate responses to support those in pain. Empathy involves understanding; compassion drives us to respond accordingly. Understanding is a positive first step, but acting with love, kindness and a commitment to justice in response to people’s suffering is essential to our Christian identity.
In a 2006 commencement speech at Xavier University, then Senator Barack Obama underscored the link between empathy and responsible action:
“There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the steelworker who’s been laid off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town. When you think like this – when you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers – it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help.”
Ultimately, the value of empathy lies not so much in our ability to rehearse other people’s realities in our minds, but in how we respond – through acts of compassion and justice – to what others need.
Choosing a companion of another kind
For a long time, Michell could not understand why the penguin he rescued followed him instead of returning to the ocean. Only many years later, during a visit to a sea life center in Argentina, did he finally understand. While he visited the penguin enclosure, the penguin’s keeper explained that a penguin will not go back to the wild without a partner of its own kind. In The Penguin Lessons, Michell recalled, “What a revelation! Suddenly, after all the years of wondering why Juan Salvado had so persistently refused to leave me on that beach in Punta del Este, I felt I had a satisfactory answer at last.”
In retrospect, what I find most striking is that Juan Salvado did not choose a companion of his own kind. He chose a creature of another kind. He chose Michell. And Michell chose Juan Salvado, teaching us that it is possible to connect across differences, even radical differences. By choosing to stay together with a genuine desire to understand each other, Michell and Juan Salvado discovered, for example, that they both longed for companionship. And to everyone’s surprise, they chose to be each other’s companions.
Perhaps the most significant “penguin lesson” for us today is that building connections across differences is both possible and desirable.
Perhaps the most significant “penguin lesson” for us today is that building connections across differences is both possible and desirable. By showing empathy and forming meaningful relationships with people and other living beings who are not like us, we will likely discover how much we share and, in the process, will nurture one another.
I hope that by choosing one another across differences and by broadening our sphere of care, we will be in a better position to cultivate what pastoral theologian Ryan LaMothe describes as “radical communities of inclusive care”: spaces where the primary criterion for belonging is a commitment to caring for all who dwell on the earth.
