Shake out your cape

19Sep
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

During the Pandemic months of 2020, “the Church” existed, lurching from Zoom moment to Zoom moment. Small Group discussions looked like episodes of Hollywood Squares, yet the hunger for community made vital our time together in the digital boxes.


I wasn’t sure how long I had been absent from our Zoom session with Sister Helen Prejean. 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. The Zoom grid 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 that was arrested when our moderator 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 and outstretched arms. Now 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.


Seven-plus decades later I have come to accept that my adventures of the imagination amount to clinging to a raft captive of the raging 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 folded my cape into a purse to carry life’s worrisome matters and deferred dreams for later. In it I also keep a few sharp shards of shame collected over the years. Periodically, I try to shake it out and come clean; but I fear I have become inured to the scars the shame keeps fresh. I know I am not alone, worry and shame are our untreated pandemic. The problem is this: later is now; and God’s dream for us is as soaring, humble heroes of mercy.


Have we forgotten that Jesus gave his life for us on a Roman cross. It was 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 undeserved gift by shaking out our cape for all time and take flight.


Then the mercy Christ ordained us to give will be clear-eyed, pure, and healing. I believe the vacant, hungry street girl; the defeated, homeless veteran; and the frightened, defiant urban teen, each knew how to fly at some point in his childhood. More than the dollars we may gift without eye-contact, or our words that try to judge or fix; let us tell the hungry souls our names and ask them theirs. As peers, let us wrap them in our capes of mercy and draw out their shame in empathy.

Musical Meditation: The Snowman, Walking in the Air


Lord of infinite patience, help me to accept that the pain of being a tightly wound bud is far greater than the pain of becoming a blossom “to gladden the hearts” of our people. Time is short. Amen.

GraceEmpathy

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