decision to cancel a large rally planned for March 23, 2020. Fourteen buses were scheduled, 600 people had registered, volunteers had been working for months on signs, tee shirts, registration. Legislative visits were scheduled, materials ordered. Plans were well underway for a rally even larger than one we held in 2018, the largest in our state capital in years.
A call from a volunteer raised concerns about the risks of gathering hundreds in the capital rotunda. "What if someone on the top floor sneezed?" That one question set the wheels in motion. The next day an email went out, explaining the decision to cancel. A day later the capital event office called to say the capital was closed. A year later, it's still closed to any public gathering. Rally signs and tee shirts are still in boxes in volunteers' garages.
Sometimes our plans are taken away in a breath, a moment, a simple sentence.
I wrote. that week a year ago, about mercy.
During Lent, my church, like many others, begins each worship service with the decalogue: a reading of the ten commandments, with the refrain, after each: Lord have mercy.
It’s a reminder, a prayer, a confession.
Lord have mercy.
In the Prayers of the People we repeat the same refrain:
For the aged and infirm, for the widowed and orphans, and for the sick and the suffering, let us pray to the Lord.Lord, have mercy.
For the poor and the oppressed, for the unemployed and the destitute, for prisoners and captives, and for all who remember and care for them, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord, have mercy.
For deliverance from all danger, violence, oppression, and degradation, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord, have mercy.
We said those words again today, ten times: Lord have mercy.
I've prayed those words more deeply in the past year, at so many times when I don't know what to pray. For my own health, and the health of those I love. For our family, our church, our country, our world.
Lord have mercy.
What strikes me now, reading back on my words from a year ago, is how much my experience of mercy is tied to my willingness to ask and my willingness to give. I find myself surprised at what I wrote. It's a lesson I seem to see and forget, a refrain I hear when I pause long enough to listen.
In the New Testament, the word translated “mercy” is the Greek word “eleos,” from the same root as oil, “oil poured out”. Again and again, Jesus was asked for mercy and extended it in healing, in forgiveness and finally, in his greatest act of mercy, in conquering death through his own death and resurrection.
In this fractured time, my heart turns toward that image of God carrying us, like frightened children, in strong arms of mercy.
We don’t deserve it, can’t earn it. We fight against it until overcome by grief or fear.
We don’t deserve it, can’t earn it. We fight against it until overcome by grief or fear.
Lord have mercy.
In the beatitudes, the first lengthy teaching Jesus offered, he said “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.”
At first sight, this looks like a contradiction: if mercy is something unearned, then why does it seem conditional?
That word “eleos”, like oil poured out, suggests a way of understanding this: when we allow ourselves to be channels of mercy, we experience it more fully, see it more clearly.
When we refuse to offer mercy to others, we shut ourselves off from mercy itself, like rocks hardened to God and to each other.
Looking back at this year we've traveled through, I find myself wondering if if I've grown in experience of mercy. Am I more merciful to others? More aware of God's mercy to me? Are those even the right questions?
I quoted last year from Denise Levertov's poem, "To Live in the Mercy of God," including this:
.
. . . not mild, not temperate,God’s love for the world. Vastflood of mercyflung on resistance.
Reading back over the poem today, I find myself resting in the opening image:
To lie back under the tallestoldest trees. How far the stemsrise, risebefore ribs of shelteropen!
There is so much we don't know, certainly can't explain.
What if we're invited to simply lie back, as under a tall, tall tree, knowing its roots go far below us, seeing its branches far above us, held in a space of love and mystery. What if this year, this life, are leaves blown by the wind, while we ourselves are held in a vast flood of mercy that far exceeds all understanding.
We will be sorting through the wreckage of this year for a very long time to come. There are sorrows to grieve, stories to be told. It will take mercy to do that work. Mercy to come to terms with all we've lost and failed to learn. Is that work ours to do? I'm not really sure. There is a great deal I'm no longer sure of.
What if we're invited to simply lie back, as under a tall, tall tree, knowing its roots go far below us, seeing its branches far above us, held in a space of love and mystery. What if this year, this life, are leaves blown by the wind, while we ourselves are held in a vast flood of mercy that far exceeds all understanding.
We will be sorting through the wreckage of this year for a very long time to come. There are sorrows to grieve, stories to be told. It will take mercy to do that work. Mercy to come to terms with all we've lost and failed to learn. Is that work ours to do? I'm not really sure. There is a great deal I'm no longer sure of.
My prayer, a year ago, was this:
In this time of loss, anxiety, uncertainty, fear, may we set down our resistance, pray for God’s mercy, live in God’s mercy, act as agents of that mercy we so desperately need.
In this time of loss, anxiety, uncertainty, fear, may we set down our resistance, pray for God’s mercy, live in God’s mercy, act as agents of that mercy we so desperately need.
My prayer, today, is simply this:
Lord have mercy.
