Mercy and Merci

March 10th, 2024 | Click to Comment

I had a dream recently in which I was making a sign that simply read “Merci” in red letters on a white background. I was on a front porch, nailing the sign to a square pillar coated with old and crackling white paint. It was important for the drivers going by on the road in front of the house to be able to read the sign if they looked to their left.

Merci—the French word for “thank you.” As I began to wake, holding onto the dream, I saw the word on the sign as reading “Mercy.” It turns out that the word mercy does come from the old usage of the French merci. The dreaming mind made connections I hadn’t thought about.

Mercy is the bestowing of a kindness that we have no claim to, that we are in no position to repay. Compassionate treatment when the ordinary terms of justice would allow retribution more harsh—this is mercy. Mercy also names the spiritual reward for bestowing this kind of benevolence on others.

So in the modern-day French acknowledgment of a kindness, “thank you” bears traces of humility. It names gratitude not just for the favor, but for the benevolence of a person who has willingly and generously chosen to bestow unearned kindness in their treatment of us. For their mercy upon us.

I didn’t give much thought to the concept of mercy in my younger years. I didn’t consider myself powerful; I wasn’t in a position to bestow mercy. Kindness, yes. Always. But mercy has a different flavor. And I felt, without ever articulating it, that mercy was needed by those who had done something criminal and were in fear of judgment—a dramatic circumstance that seemed far from my ordinary life.

But life brings wrenching changes that we are powerless to avoid, no matter how fervently we employ our favorite tactics to keep ourselves safe. While we make plans and devote ourselves to the things we think we want, loss makes its way to our door. Its power is beyond our control. We need help getting through the hardest things. “Mercy” is the deeply human cry when life blows open our door.

I recall the voices of my elders as they would respond to shocking news. “Lord have mercy,” they would say. Or in the way of my mother, who utters simply and emphatically, “Mercy!”

Life teaches us the humility and wisdom of asking for mercy. We have immense agency in our lives, but we do not have the power or control we want to believe we have.

Yet the other part of what life teaches us is named in mercy’s alter-ego: merci—thank you. Life has a benevolence that sustains us in every moment. We are carried in ways we forget to notice. Our very breath happens when we are paying attention to other things.

There are many ways to name the life-giving force that sustains all of creation—Love, Spirit, Source, God. May we all remember our connection to this Life Force and to one another, as part of the flow of love and mercy and thanks.

Susan Christerson Brown

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I’mportant

June 29th, 2019 | Click to Comment

This morning I had coffee on my front porch—a rare pleasure that takes more time than I can usually afford. Or so I’ve long convinced myself. Apparently I believe there are more important things to do than taking in the abundance of an early summer morning. That belief has probably caused me to miss out on a lot of other good things as well.

There are so many things I can’t take time for, I tell myself all too often. I have important things to do. I’m portant. As if goodness and value is something I need to manufacture.  As if there were not something more vast and wise and powerful that wants to show up through me.

The sure sense of what’s important grows distorted when it becomes “I’m portant.” I’m portant says that that the quality of my life and of those around me is all about me—what I do, what I know, what I contribute. I’m portant is what happens when I lose connection with the source of life and instead believe everything hinges on the effort I make to be safe and worthy and loved.

“Portent” foreshadows what’s to come, and I think of “I’m portant” in that way, as if I’m the one determining what’s to come, as if I were in charge. When I’m trying to be the prime generator of my life, I lose touch with the greater reality. It’s like struggling to touch bottom when I could simply let the water hold me up. Or trading away my place in the magnificence of creation for a small world of my own making.

So I’m practicing creating some space between me and the day’s demands. I’m trying to discern the truly important priorities as opposed to the ego’s clamor of “I’m portant.” Pausing to enjoy the world helps me remember that a vast and powerful life force causes everything to unfold, including my life and work. I have a part to play, but I don’t have the job of making it happen by myself. In fact, when I act as if it’s all up to me—believing that I’m portant—I cut myself off from the flow of life that would carry me forward.

Of course, there’s the reality of everyday life to navigate. Showing up at work, getting kids to school, arriving for appointments on time is part of an orderly, responsible life. We can’t always sit on the porch. But making space within the calendars that drive us is part of a life well-lived.

We are more than our schedules and obligations. Every moment marked by the clock is also a moment that manifests what is timeless. There is a greater reality in which we live and move and have our being. In the moments when we can remember that, there is peace.

Those moments enjoying the lavender budding on new stalks, a wren hopping across the porch, and even the ubiquitous morning glory vines winding up in new places, feel a lot like vacation. I feel connected to a world that encompasses more than the current political climate, one that isn’t pitching me to buy anything.

But old patterns die hard. Part of me wants to focus on the weeds that need pulling. “I’m portant,” is the message when those weeds call to the self that is driven to be useful, to get things done, to make the place look good. Yes, there is a time for weeding. But that work can be held in a wider context, one that honors and appreciates the living, growing world.

I do better when I remember that I’m not so portant after all. My mind is clearer when I’m not trying so hard to think. My heart is more open when I bring awareness and compassion to my own limitations. I move through the world more graciously when I can relax and receive the sensory information all around.

Perhaps instead of portant, I can be present.

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Ash Wednesday – Finding Ourselves in the Dust

February 5th, 2018 | 2 Comments

Ash Wednesday will soon be upon us—literally, if we attend a service with the imposition of ashes. Receiving the mixture of oil and ash in the shape of a cross on one’s forehead comes with the reminder to “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

These words are part of a ritual I have long found meaningful even as I resisted what I took to be its message. But my attitude toward the Ash Wednesday service, with its stark reminder of death, has evolved over the years. I’ve moved from rejection of what I perceived as a dark view of life and death, to acknowledgment of death’s inevitability, to appreciation of a ritual that honors the reality of our limited time on earth. But I’ve always thought of that return to dust as happening literally, at our physical death.

Last night I dreamed I was on my belly in a dusty yard, struggling to move forward without being able to raise myself up. I was without strength or power, in contact with the ground. I could see plants growing at eye level and I thought of the healing herbs I wanted to grow. Later in the dream I was walking, but cars zoomed by leaving me in the dust.

I woke from the dream with a sense of vulnerability, yet feeling oddly peaceful. As I worked with the images from the dream I felt a shift occur. My experience of dust in the dream opened a new way of understanding the dust proclaimed in the Ash Wednesday liturgy.

Returning to the dust doesn’t happen only at our death. We return to the dust over and over as life knocks us off our feet. It feels like a defeat, which it is: a de-feat (or even de-feet), not something we accomplish but something done to us, something we endure. Some power outside our control brings a new reality we wouldn’t have chosen. Our plans and expectations turn to dust, and life as we know it is over.

But in the dust we’re back where we came from, supported by our connection with the earth. The word humble has the same root as humus (Latin for soil) and human. In the humility of experiencing our limitations, we find ourselves supported by a greater strength.  Being humble puts us in touch with what Paul Tillich called the Ground of Being. Our vulnerability brings us into contact with the real support life offers, as opposed to the illusory supports we try to create for ourselves.

Finding ourselves in the dust is a blow to the ego but growth for the soul. It grounds us and helps us remember who we are. On the ground we’re in the place where life is rooted and healing herbs grow. We experience the solidity of the earth upon which we walk. We remember our dependence on it, our oneness with it. And throughout our time in this world, the earth strengthens us as we regain our balance and rise again.

The ritual of Ash Wednesday’s imposition of ashes is a reminder of how brief our lives are. But it also speaks to the many times we find ourselves in the dust over the course of a lifetime. In those times the dust can be a place where we encounter the grounding and strength always supporting us. In the dust we encounter the essence of life and of ourselves. Ash Wednesday isn’t the dismal ritual I once thought it was. Rather, it points to how the heart of life is often hidden in the places where we least want to look.

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