Mercy Reflection #2

It's simply amazing what happens when you choose to focus on something and put it out there, in the universe, that said something is your focus of choice.

Mercy. I claimed it for me this year and let the universe know. And now the stuff is coming full throttle...

Yesterday I walk by someone at the gym who literally makes me physically sick. I throw him a death glare and feel great about it. Then I see someone later in the day who knows this person and i'm bragging about my death glare and how righteous it is, and she reminds me: if you knew his story, you would have mercy on him.

Mercy is in the story. The story of someone's life.

I'm a trained spiritual counselor. I KNOW THIS ALREADY. But when it comes to the people who most trigger me, I forget. This is why we *must* all, and I mean absolutely all of us no matter how enlightened we think we may be, have friends who will check our icky behaviors and call us in to greater levels of integrity and accountability.

So today I'm in the shower and it hits me, there's a difference between silence that's held for the sake of oppression and silence that's held for the sake of liberation. One is merciful and the other is all about vengance. And there are names, like a list of names immediately pops up in my head, of people that I've been holding vengeful silence with as a result of the way I am triggered by them. I realize quickly that the trigger is all about the foundational wound in my family system. I acknowledge that a lack of mercy towards others in me is all about me and my pain, and while they may be embodying stuff that's icky/awful, it's not my work to change them but to be honest about the way my pain is unmercifully targetting them.

It occurs to me: mercy for them is in listening to their stories. I break these vengeful oppressive silences by asking these folks to open up to me. And I hold liberative silence and hear them for mercy's sake.

Here's what I am going to do in 2014. I'm going to write that list down. And I'm going to pray for the willingness to arrive at mercy for the folks on my list. I'm going to ask for the willingness to invite each and every one of them to tell me their story. And then I'm going to listen if they let me. It's an experiment in mercy making and I'm going to do it.

Wish me luck (or advice/suggestions/responses/ideas, etc)...

Perfection

Things are never perfect on a Sunday morning
when you're a progressive, queer, big city girl
pastoring in a small town, midwestern church.

But the stars aligned and this morning was perfect.

Worship was perfect. Literally perfect: wouldn't change a thing. Perfect.

Then I came home
and watched in the window
just watched for twenty minutes
as my spouse shoveled the drive way
and my daughter, in her hat, mittens, down coat and boots
frolicked in the snow beside him, completely immersed in the joy
and magic of Michigan winter.

Never in my 32 years of living
have both my personal and professional worlds
felt perfect at the same time. And I imagine this moment is just as fleeting
as the other moments of torture, insight, depression and hope.
But for right now
it feels pretty good
to name, claim and live
into perfection.

One Word 365: Mercy

I'm getting ON the band wagon, yall. A few days ago one of my congregants posted something on Facebook about taking one word and making it your focus all year long. This was supposed to be more meaningful than some kind of New Years resolution that was bound to fail. And you know what? I buy it. I buy it because I think going deep on something, on one thing, is better than being surface with lots of things. So I'm on it. I'm doing it.

Mercy.

Wayne Muller was my spiritual director for a while. And because he's brilliant and bold, he clued in to my need for mercy (as a person, pastor, world-view, practice, concept, etc) right away. I, on the other hand, fought the notion tooth and nail. Why? Because all my life my judgment (as opposed to mercy) has been the source of my strength and positive feedback from others. I'm able to spot dynamics and call them out like the survivor of dysfunctional systems that I am. What I've not been able to master is how to receive those systems with the mercy they need to be transformed. I'm also, obviously as an extension of this lack of merciful receptivity with others, not very merciful with myself. Which it turns out, sucks. Mercy is a necessary condition of love. I think. I think I know.

So, this is the year, yall. I'm going all in.

Looking for it. Trying it out. Listening to it. Seeking it. Practicing. Writing. Delivering. Receiving.

2014: The Year of Mercy. Go.