Compassion and Mercy

30May
One deep calls to another in the noise of your cataracts; 
all your rapids and floods have gone over me.
      The Lord grants his loving-kindness in the daytime; 
       in the night season his song is with me,
       a prayer to the God of my life.
-Psalm 42:9-10


I wasn’t sure how long I had been absent from our Small Group meeting. We had been talking about the imperative for compassion in the art of gifting Mercy. We had handled the scenario of offering big, messy mercy to the criminally guilty and we had touched on the small mercies of reaching out to the street-dweller or the social transgressor. We had passionately, and honesty dealt with the difficulty of reconciling guilt and accountability with mercy, empathy, and shame. Wait…Shame!? That one sent my attention on a journey. It was arrested only when Katie (Rafferty) said, “Marsden. I’d like to hear the thoughts you’ve been holding behind that, um …professorial look, for the last few minutes.” OK, I’m back.


I had camped out on shame. At that moment I was thinking how easy it was to fly when I was seven years old. One needed only a yard of light-weight fabric for a cape, outstretched arms; then run; run as fast as you can. Ahhhh, once again among the clouds, free, powerful, and unafraid. We could fly at age seven because our souls were as clear and light as the day we were born.  


Six and a half decades later I have come to live with mind adventures that have amounted to rowing my life’s boat against the current of a river that pulls me from waterfall to waterfall where “all the rapids and floods have gone over me,” as the Psalmist sings. 


I don’t fly anymore because I use my cape to carry about life’s worrisome matters to solve later, along with some sharp shards of shame I collected over the decades. Periodically, I try to shake it out and come clean, but I fear I have become inured to the scars the shame leaves. I know I am not alone, worry and shame are our real pandemic. 


Dispensing, receiving, and hoarding shame is the disease of our culture and it seems we have forgotten that Jesus gave his life for us on a Roman cross, a death designed for maximum suffering and maximum shame. He gave his life on the cross in the ultimate act of Grace to pay the ransom for our sins and shame. Jesus wants us to fully accept his gift by shaking out our cape for all time.


Then the compassion we have to offer others in mercy is equal, pure, and healing. I have to believe the hollow-eyed, hungry street girl; the stooped, defeated homeless veteran; and the frightened, defiant gangbanger, each knew how to fly at some point in his childhood. More than the dollars, or the or the words to fix, let us draw out their shame in empathy. Let us wrap them in our capes of mercy, that they may choose to fly back home.


Musical Reflection - Walking on the Air (from The Snowman) - Libera


The Lord grants his loving-kindness in the daytime; in the night season his song is with me. By the song of his grace, let there be no shame or trembling -- for us-and-them. Amen.

Compassion

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