What to do when you witness suffering

When we witness suffering of another, the heart always responds. It's designed to respond. What should I do? the heart asks. How can I help?It's easy to determine what to do when we are sitting beside a crying friend or helping an aging parent to bed. We hold their hand, we listen, we open our heart and allow the natural flow of love to pour up and out toward them.But what of the suffering we witness from a distance?What happens when our heart responds to a stranger as we pass the scene of an accident; when we witness the suffering of flood victims on television; when we are moved by a story about someone we've never met? What can we do with this flow of love?We can let it flow.We can offer our support as energy -we can send love.This is the natural response, the only response to suffering. Oh, we may feel other things - revulsion, fear, worry. But under all of that, there is love. The heart always responds to suffering with love. It's how we are made.We can translate this love into action - writing a check, making a phone call. We can translate it into prayer - allowing the natural up-swelling of concern to flow from our own heart to theirs. This activates and increases the very real support of collective prayer - and the support of the angels - while also honoring and responding to our own heart's natural call to flow love.This releases us from the feelings of powerlessness that arise when we don't know what to do - feelings of worry and guilt. We DO know what to do. We are already doing it - our own wise heart already flowing love.