A Timely Reflection: The Path to Mercy

We’re prone to being judgmental. All of us. And as we grow, some of us learn to let it go. But wow, it’s hard.

We label things and people as good or bad, right or wrong, in or out. Why? Because when we’re younger, it gives us some sense of stability. It’s a very “outside-in” type of stability, and if I clearly label what’s around me, then I can feel safe. Problem is, you can’t control everything, it’ll kill you. So what’s the solution?

Finding Inner Stability
Get stable inside. Folks who aren’t stable inside will often command and control what’s outside. I know; I used to be that way. I masked it with charm, but I was that way.

In my last blog, I wrote about how when you embrace joy, you embrace mess and begin to see how all parts belong. Here, I want to unpack what acceptance of these parts means. Simply put, it means we learn to love the unique things that make us us (talents, gifts, aches, pains, everything), and by doing so, we learn to love the uniqueness of others.

My Nagging Chest Pain
About ten years ago, I developed a mild chest pain. A year later, it intensified as I spent six months taking care of my mom while she was dying. In the months following her death, it spun out of control. I got an EKG and other tests, and we eventually moved out of California in an attempt to calm down what felt like external chaos. That helped a lot, but seven years later, it all came back.

In hindsight, I see it clearer. But in the midst of the chest pain’s re-occurrence, I was convinced I would die young. I assumed the pains were a physical problem, but they weren’t. The problem was story-related, psychological, and spiritual. What was disguised as thoughtful foresight, good planning, and organizational skills was driven by an out-of-control interior life—a life I tried to stabilize by creating safe spaces for myself (and others).

After plenty of counseling and personal work, I came to see how growing up in a chaotic home formed a belief in me that I would never feel “that way” again. What I mean by “that way” is the feeling of being out of control and at the whim of the next crazy thing to happen. But before we’re too quick to judge ourselves or others, we need to learn to bless the behavior that got us this far. So…

“Good job, younger self. You got me here. Thank you. But you can’t get me to the next place I want to be. Please take a rest!”

The Desires of an Unstable Inner Life & The Antidote
It sounds funny to put it that way, but “taking a rest” took years of work. Maybe in the future, I’ll write about how I learned to do that. But here, I want to drill in a little more about the desires at play when we have unstable inner lives. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, will help us here.

In his book, Passions of the Soul, Williams covers at length the writings of Saint John Cassian (c. 360 – c. 435), a renowned Christian monk, theologian, and writer of early Christian monasticism. Cassian, Williams writes, might call this over-planfulness “avarice.” We don’t use this word much anymore. It means “a longing for control—control over one’s circumstances (present and future), control over one’s image… Avarice arises from various sorts of fear: the fear of being at the mercy of other people’s perceptions and other people’s freedom, the fear of an unknown future that urges me to make sure I have resources for all crises and eventualities—a fear that can lead to unlimited avarice because I can never know what lies ahead.” (pp. 48-49)

If you spent time with the version of me that behaved that way, please forgive me. Yet here’s what I’ve learned; Mercy is the Counterbalance

Yet Jesus comes along and says something so simple—“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5:7)

Williams outlines how mercy is the counterbalance, the elixir, to avarice. “Drop your obsession with…control and all the rest of it,” he writes, “and you may find that another kind of relationship becomes possible—that essential Kingdom-shaped relationship [which means the presence and reign of Jesus] which is mutual giving, mutual nourishing—that world of the Kingdom, into which the Beatitudes seek to introduce us.” (p. 54)

To release avarice and embrace a life where we can mutually give and receive sounds like love. And I want more of that.

A Timely Reflection on Mercy
I actually wrote what precedes this sentence about a month ago and sensed I should sit on it (for some reason). Ironically, this post follows the week of the inauguration where Archbishop Mariann Edgar Budde quoted Matthew 5:7 at the National Cathedral to the new presidential administration. She gently addressed the president, asking him to exercise mercy in the coming years while he executes his agenda. Not surprising, he didn’t respond too well.

What makes me most sad is how many are calling Budde’s message inappropriate and “woke.” Well, I guess the words of Jesus have put him on the outside of the form of Christianity we are seeing in the news. I take heart, however, that Jesus wasn’t an American, a Christian, or most of the other assumptions we carry about him. He wasn’t western, but eastern, and didn’t come to start a religion or a political platform but something else entirely—renewed hearts, lives, relationships, networks, and places of peace. Shalom.

A Personal Challenge: Showing Mercy
How will that look in my life in the coming few years?

I was out with my son Isaac a few nights ago, and a hungry man approached me asking for food. I’m ashamed to admit that my heart has grown hard after living in multiple urban environments throughout my life where the needs seem impossible to meet. I turned the man down, and Isaac asked me why. I had to be honest with my son and admit maybe I’ve become jaded.

I’m challenging myself and my readers: Show mercy. This post is about acceptance of all our stuff. So today, I accept I’ve grown jaded. I’ve grown afraid of speaking up about our hardened society, and that needs to change.

Once we grow to accept what’s true of us, our inner world takes its first step to stability. And when we’re stable, we can better love. More on that in the next blog.