Mercy as a Charism

I find myself two months since my last post, caught up in the usual busyness of life. I thank God that most of this, while challenging, has been rewarding: watching my students grow in knowledge and understanding; watching my beautiful daughters show me how lucky I am to know little souls; grappling with everyday problems. I also struggle with the kinds of problems that feel like they can’t be solved, or won’t be, at least, for a long time. God throws quite a few of those at me, alongside graces. Always graces, snuck in as part of the package strange and foreboding, even.  Throughout my life I have found on my proverbial doorstep so many with deeply broken selves and struggles, and in recent times I have found my own, too—struggles that test the core of what I believe, in my soul, to be the right way to live in this world as we look toward the next: to be merciful, even in the face of mercilessness.

Thanksgiving is upon us, and mercilessness is on the rise; my prayer is that we see the graces being snuck in as a part of all this; that we present our true selves to the One who made us; that somehow, even when we are at our human worst, that we find ways to talk and share, even when we disagree. As of right now the only things I know to be true: the Holy Spirit is present even when I think it’s the darkest and regardless of whether I see; that compassion is a charism we must invest in for ourselves; and that I value relationship in mercy, not in grandstanding or false righteousness. These days, this feels hard to come by—which is why I pray for it all, shamelessly coming before my Creator, knowing that the truth of time and this present moment is the only real thing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alone with the Alone

I have written before about the way that suffering tends to make us feel alone, untethered. Varying degrees of genuine concern and platitude can appear in the midst of suffering, which can either create a deeper feeling of loneliness or at best stave it off a bit. The bottom line is, though, that most suffering *is* in fact solitude. It can be shared, talked about, worked through, analyzed--and all this is the blessing of the human condition. We instinctively want and need to share our burdens; we then turn to faith as part of this because when there’s a path we have to walk alone, where no amount of sharing could make any of it bearable, faith becomes the walking stick, the sure guide, the sturdy flashlight in the middle of a storm. Some of our faith experiences are shared, but in most cases, suffering creates in the sufferer an acknowledgement of the soul--of its place in our experience as the go-between the earth we stand on and that place of beyond understanding. Many times I have ...
Read more

Generosity of Spirit

Looking up to the altar, my head began to spin--the vision of the monks gathering, the smell of incense, the blue and violet of the windows all began to swim together, and I found myself sitting down to make it stop. I was overheating, but did not know what to do. It’s not overstatement to say that the woman standing next to me suddenly seemed to know what I was thinking and what was happening to me. She leaned in and whispered “I can go out the door with you if you would like. You look like you need to rest--are you ok?” I looked up at her blurry face, thankful she understood my embarrassment at interrupting the service, and could only choke-- “But I want to take communion.” She knew better. “Ok--I will take you to the front--on the side there’s a chair you can sit on and wait, and it might be cooler there. I’ll get you some orange juice. Don’t worry.” I nodded, and took her hand, like a child, and let her lead me. She disappeared, and suddenly I found myself involuntarily cry...
Read more

Land o Plenty

I just got back from a small load grocery trip, to make my husband some tacos. I get all excited about the possibilities--the avocado, the cilantro, the lime, those flavors melded together. Makes me think of my favorite Mexican restaurant in town, owned and operated by immigrants who are now newly populating our area--of the humble simplicity of the food, the pride with which it is presented. Makes me also think of the little faces of children in the after school tutoring program, awaiting parents’ arrival from the chicken factories, fidgeting grimy shoes and smoothing well-worn skirts, hungry for their simple snack of a cookie. What struck me as I wandered the aisles was not so much the sharp pain in my back from sitting at work for too long, but the endless variety and choices that lay before me. To make this simple and humble meal, I had two choices of avocado, four choices of onions, mounds of cilantro and limes green as a summer field--in the dead of winter. I had something ...
Read more