Some days the biggest act of mercy I am required to provide to anyone is when I don't say anything about how my husband tries to help me with the laundry by leaving it half dry in a basket unfolded without remembering that (if left that way) the clothes will wrinkle and need to be washed again to straighten out. I'm pretty sure that I am extremely fortunate in that my life provides me with many more reasons to see where I am loved than where I need to show mercy toward the people I share day to day interactions with--and I am deeply grateful for that. I know I am loved. I know I am blessed.
I am grateful that after a storm there is the smell of rain. Rainbows appear before the puddles dry up. It has been a long time since my life felt like one long rainstorm. Last week, when I went in to St. Paul, MN and attended mass at the cathedral, I felt the love and mercy of God pouring down on me through the light flooding through the windows in the dome above as I walked up for communion. It was a strange feeling, because I spent the whole summer avoiding God and not going to mass. I wrote a blog post about how much I was hurt by my mom and a priest and sent it out for anyone to see. {Whether or not this makes me a bad person--I felt like one because it is so deeply ingrained in me that love covers up wrong doing and doesn't expose it. I know I have to fight that--but it takes some brass ones to point your finger at the church or a priest with a rebuke. Even now. Even after so much has been revealed.} When I went back to mass, I didn't feel like I had earned God's attention. I thought I would just slip through the crowd unnoticed like a middle child. Didn't happen. He greeted me like a prodigal.
The next day, my husband and I went to mass in Chippewa Falls at Notre Dame Parish where Monsignor Pierce held mass and said a homily about being open to when you are called to do things you don't feel you have to do or want to do--as perhaps Jesus did when he was asked by the Canaanite woman repeatedly to show mercy to her and hear her request for him to heal her daughter.
{Depiction of a Canaanite woman that once was part of a piece of furniture. Found at the Oriental Museum at the University of Chicago.}
Mons. Pierce spoke about the woman who wouldn't let Jesus alone until he heard her requests. I have felt for years like that person. Like, "Hey, I might be a dog in this scenario--but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table. Please listen, Lord." I feel like Jesus heard me. Something lifted.
This makes me want to show more mercy when I am called to show mercy. I have been shown heaping amounts of mercy. I didn't cause the harm that I describe in earlier blog posts, but in repeating the stories there have been times (despite my good intentions--which are to get to a greater place of understanding and to stop feeling inappropriate shame about things I didn't choose) when I have allowed my pain to create pain in others. In my younger years, I felt entitled to act out in ways I look back on with shame. I don't want that.
The crossroads of mercy and justice and love seem like very dangerous intersections to me. I have been marching on the justice road for a long time. My upper body strength really developed from holding up so many protest signs over the years. My legs are thin from walking far. My feet hurt from traveling.
I'm ready for change. At the same time, I feel like making the turn toward love or mercy is frightening. It is going to require faith. When I think of the story of the prodigal child in the bible, I think of myself (I think of pride in the negative sense.) I have thought of myself as the one who didn't go off with all of the love and support and material possessions given to me and become an drug addict who steals from his family or lies and hits people and then acts like nothing happened. I wasn't the one who decided to manipulate others and use them selfishly for my own advancement as a way of life. I feel proud and a little vain because I had the courage to speak about what seemed unjust. Sure, I may have been set up as the fall guy to take the consequences of being the person who did that...but I had the courage no one else did. I wasn't completely unaware of the cost. I don't often identify with the sibling who demanded (and received) money to go and travel the world only to find himself hungry and envious of pigs but certain that he would be received by his parent with love and forgiveness nonetheless. I don't see myself as the parent who loves the child and wants to receive the child despite what has happened--what has been lost and what has been taken for granted. I kind of resented hearing that story growing up. It made me feel nauseated. I was never considered, "The good kid" in my family. {So that's not how I identified with the older sibling.} I identified with the older child's desire to see things be fair and to be appreciated. So who am I if not that person?
And in thinking through that and taking it to prayer in mass, I received a little nudge in response. I don't know why I didn't hear this news from God many years ago. Maybe I wasn't ready. Maybe I needed to keep holding up my protest signs a little longer. Maybe I'll never be ready to let those go...but I will keep trying and I know that he will keep giving me the courage to do that if I let him.
The message I received was that our families don't always give us what we want or need. God, in his mercy fills in those gaps. He gives us a new identity. I felt that when I was in mass last week on Friday and Saturday (bonus points for me for going twice in one week, right?)...that this was the message God wanted me to carry away and not just keep selfishly but to share with those who need it when I am called to show mercy myself.
For the first time ever, I even considered that I might be wrong in one way about the priest I have long believed to be so harmful to my family. I was exposed to some pretty unusual wickedness. That's certain. Still, he may not have been as strong or as powerful as I believed. I have to believe God is bigger and his love is stronger than the pain I experienced or I won't recover. I have to want to be healed so much that I trust God will take care of the injustice for me. That's not the kind of thing you can tell another person without creating resentment. It has to be something the person realizes God is trying to tell them. I feel like God was trying to tell me that.
I am not writing this blog to further expose or whine about all of the ways that I have been harmed or wronged in life. I am writing to find what God meant for me to learn through the experiences I have lived. That's what I believe he did for me in a quiet way. I'm not sure how I will be asked to show mercy, but I know that refusing will be more difficult after last week.
St. Bernard is quoted as saying, "The prophet does not exempt himself from the general wretchedness, lest he be left out of the mercy too."
I have tried this many times in my life--to leave the past behind. It's like I throw the laundry in and the detergent and take it to the dryer when it is time but forget to fold it and put it away before the wrinkles set in so deeply that I have to rewash. It isn't a one time effort. I have to stay focused on this and not let my attention wander. Maybe somebody I know has been praying for me--because I'm catching on. I'm grateful.
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