Mercy Me, Little Hound!

There's a yippy, mean mop of a dog on M Street that likes to scare the pants off Finn and me.  Yeah, I know.  Dogs don't wear pants, but you know what I mean.  In the past few months,  Finn and I finally have gotten wise to him and cross the street ahead of time, if I see his porch light on.

Today, though, we stayed the course, dog be damned.  Porch light ablaze, his shag-carpet body quavering at the ready, I did my best to ignore the slathering hound and his ear-piercing bravado.  For me, it was a lesson in mercy.  Better for me to forgive the dog its annoying dog-ness than to keep crossing the street or cursing it.

Lately, I seem to keep bumping into that word--mercy.

Just last night, I finished Bryan Stevenson's book "Just Mercy," a sobering account of this country's imbalanced, incapacitating practices of incarceration.  Largely devoid, in equal parts, of both justice and mercy, our country's prisons are brutally hard on people who are not rich, are not white, are not desired.  Stevenson, whose law practice focuses on these under-/over-represented people, wraps his mercy in the form of giving voice and compassion to this largely forgotten, often demonized population.

Stevenson's brand of mercy is not for sissies.  His is framed in a relentless, demanding and, at times, demoralizing pursuit of returning the elements of humanity to locked-up humans.  His work reminds me to reach across, especially to those whose voices too often go unheard.

Notions of mercy are also coming at me from Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico.  Action and contemplation--in the same sentence!  Isn't that a kick in the pants?!  My friend Scott recommended I pick up a copy of Rohr's "Falling Upward," a book that focuses on this second half of life I'm in.  Rohr's also got a daily email he sends out and today's was focused on--you guessed it--mercy.


In the email, I learned that the word mercy (a word that can feel quaint and awkward in these times) comes from the Etruscan merc--meaning "merchant or exchange."  In this context, then, mercy is a flow that requires openings on both ends--in giving and in receiving, which makes mercy the opposite of a power play because it distributes its power--its forgiveness--equally.

Just like the name Center for Action and Contemplation seems ironic, Stevenson's book title "Just Mercy" pits together seemingly opposite ideas--how can justice and mercy possibly coincide?  Doesn't one knock the legs out from the other?

Back to Rohr for a little perspective: "Every time God forgives us, God is saying his own rules don't matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us."  Wait, what?  God isn't the rule-obsessed, letter-of-the-law, don't-mix-your-materials titan of Old Testament fame?!

Mercy, it seems, is a rebel clothed in soft fabric.  A nudger that puts us in unfamiliar territory, a desire that causes us to question the rules, an act that flies in the face of authority and fills all while emptying none.

Mercy is me bending down at the little white fence on M Street so that I might pet the snarling beast.  I'm not there yet, but I'm getting closer.