Mercy, Now

I’m sure I haven’t seen a video of Boy George performing, or a news clip or even a picture of him, in many years. But there he was on the second day of Lent when I clicked the link at the end of an online Lenten devotional from the Northumbria community that I’ve been reading most mornings since Ash Wednesday. He wore a flashy red hat, a black shirt, and generous swipes of gray eyeshadow and black eyeliner. Welcome to my morning, Boy George. Sing me a song.

“Mercy, Now” is the song he sang. I’d never heard the song before. The first stanza is about a father who is having a hard time. He’s lived his life and death is near. “I love my father, and he could use some mercy now.” In the second stanza, a brother is struggling and in pain. Mercy, now. The song turns its attention to church and country, to every living thing, to each of us, all of us. “Every single one of us could use some mercy now.”

The song kept playing in my head, along with the image of Boy George, singing and smiling and dancing on stage. A couple weeks later, on day 16 of Lent, another entry in a second Lenten series I’ve been reading, this one by Tamara Hill Murphy, again included a link to another version of “Mercy, Now.” This time it opened to the song sung by Mary Gauthier and in a slower, more somber style. I later read that Gauthier wrote the song, both the words and music. In her book, Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting, Gauthier wrote of visiting her father as he was dying and in the days that followed she wrote the song. She has sung it at every concert since. (Here’s a link to the lyrics.)

“People sometimes cry when they hear it, but if tears come, I think they are tears of resonance; the words provide listeners a witness to their struggle. ‘Mercy Now’ started out as a personal song, then it deepened. It became universal.”


Then the next day, Lent day 17, the Northumbria series presented yet another link to “Mercy, Now,” this version by Alana Levandoski from her album, Hymns From the Icons.

“Mercy, Now,” three times in my inbox. I’m grateful.

~~~

[Photo: These aren’t the palms from a Palm Sunday morning but from a trip to Florida several years ago. How lovely today, after getting 14 inches of snow Friday night, is the remembrance of them, reflected in the pool.]

Standing in Line for Ashes

This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. Maybe for you this day will be like any other. Or maybe you will go about your day but imagine a swipe of ash across your forehead. Or maybe, like me, you will go to a service, stand in line with others—likely some who are stripped bare or who carry a quiet grief or any number of everyday anxieties—and a minister or priest will make the sign of a cross on your forehead using ash from palms burned from last year’s Palm Sunday.

My friend Daniel Thomas has just released a new collection of his poetry, Leaving the Base Camp at Dawn. The poems explore how a long relationship of love is like a spiritual practice, and this exploration often comes disguised as narrative about forging streams and climbing mountains. A couple weeks ago I started reading his book and came upon the poem “Ash Wednesday.” I read it. Then read it again. And again. I closed the book and opened it and read it yet again. Please read it now yourself.

Go to this link. Read.

Then scroll to the bottom of the page and listen to Dan reading the poem. Reading and listening are two different things.

Carry the words with you and the way they made you feel into the beginning of Lent. Read and listen in imagination or anticipation of ash on your forehead, of standing in a “ragged line,” of carrying or observing “grief concealed.” 

~~~

[Photo: a field in February.]

Malcolm Guite Reflecting on C.S. Lewis's "Learning in Wartime"

Malcolm Guite, poet and Anglican priest, offers on YouTube periodic musings and readings from his study in the UK. In his latest video from this past week, Guite reflected on C.S. Lewis's essay "Learning in Wartime"—originally delivered in December 1939 as a radio address in which Lewis advised his students on how to live in times of war—and then drew connection to today. The video is 16 minutes long and is well worth a listen.

~~~

[Photo: Coming home this from the Ash Wednesday service at my church, I passed The Museum of Russian Art. This locally- and privately-owned museum has the largest collection of Russian Art outside of Russia. It’s very beautiful, and I’ve written about it several times. I was pleased to see this banner they’ve placed on display over their usual exhibit banner, the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag.]

Opening a Window

One weekend day in mid-January, a day when the temperature suddenly spiked to just above freezing after so many cold and subzero days, my husband and I went for a drive in celebration of the gift of the day. The sun sparkled in a way that seems to happen only in the winter. (Did you know that the earth is closer to the sun in early January than at any other time of the year?) The sky was brilliantly blue, with the snow reflecting all the light from the sun back into the sky.

I opened the sunroof window.

Oh the joy! We lifted our faces.

You should have seen our smiles. Our delight. The moment lasted only a short while before the car got too cold and I had to close the window. The temperature eventually dropped. Clouds eventually came. Snow. It was, after all, still winter. But that day’s invitation to open the window and turn my face to the light, to the sun's warmth, has stayed with me.

A short while later I opened a book of poetry that I’d bought a year earlier but never yet read, How to Love The World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, edited by James Crew. Here was a poem called “Promise” by Barbara Crooker, and this is how it began:

The day is an open road
stretching out before you.
Roll down the windows.


Ten more lines follow, and I’d include them all if not for wishing to respect the poet’s copyright, but these lines were what struck me. The third line in particular.

Roll down the windows.


There’s been so much heavy news the last couple years. So much heavy news the last couple weeks. Maybe you also need a prompting to open a window, literally or metaphorically, and turn your face to the sun. Let in the warmth, let in the light, the freshness; let what has gone missing return.

Opening a window in the middle of a very cold season is an act of joy, which means hope is present, because don’t we all hope for joy?

~

[Photo: at a local nature center, thaw circles emerging around plants that soon will be green again.]

~~~

This post was first published in my monthly newsletter, “Dear Reader.” Subscribe here.

Overwhelmed with mercy

Here’s another gem—another of many—from the gospel of Luke (Message version): "God had overwhelmed her with mercy."

May it be so for each of us.

If you don't know how to pray for another person, pray that they be under God's mercy, overwhelmed with God's mercy. Even if you think you know how to pray for another person, pray that God's mercy covers them. If you don't know how to pray for yourself, pray for God's mercy in your life. When you read the word mercy, think love.

Hope flows from the mercy of God.

Living futurally

This past weekend, the latest newsletter from James K. A. Smith, editor of Image journal, popped into my email. The subject line caught my eye: "Hope Takes Practice." Some of you may remember me mentioning, a long while back, that my working title of my (still-long-in-progress) manuscript on hope is Being On The Way: The Practice of Hope. So of course I had to quickly open his email and see what he had to say. Smith writes of "living futurally."

"Living futurally is not living in such a way that my being and doing are subsumed or overwhelmed by waiting; rather, to live futurally means that my very mode of being-in-the-world is infused by anticipation. Instead of being defined by waiting, my active life is shaped by what I hope for. I receive myself from the future. I am what I am called to be. We are what we hope for. And hope, like love, takes practice. Lord knows I need it."


There's much to think about in his words: Our current life is shaped by what we hope for. Anticipation vs waiting. Practice.

Filling with light

The last couple months I've been reading through the Gospels using The Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson. Reading through the eleventh chapter of Luke, here's what caught my attention: "Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills with light."

Maybe as a child, like me, you learned and sang the song, "This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine," based on other translations of this verse. The light in me for others. Yes to this; a wonderful thing to be taught early in life. But I appreciate this additional twist that Peterson gives, this emphasis on opening outward, "living wide-eyed in wonder and belief," not in the sense of responsibility but in the joyful sense of becoming filled with light.