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.]

Several years ago my husband and I attended a local weekend retreat offered by the Northumbria Community from England. Perhaps you have seen the book, Celtic Daily Prayer.They are the group behind that book. The Northumbria community uses a three-word rule of life in relation to God and others: "Availability and Vulnerability."

As a working writer, I was so struck then – and continue to be struck – by how well suited the community's “Rule” of availability and vulnerability is to the life of the writer.

I came to understand that the “Rule” is not a list of do’s and don’ts that one must follow, but rather it is a way of being. It is not a code of conduct but a framework of identity, a scaffold on which you build your days so that you can be who you are. Most religious orders have some variety of a rule by which they characterize themselves.

I came to understand that availability means first and foremost availability to God through time in solitude and then availability to others. It’s a word for the inner and the outer journey. Vulnerability means refusing to change reality so that things are easier to deal with. It’s a willingness to face and confront things as they are, intentionally and deliberately, a preparedness to find truth – or God – wherever it exists.

These two words and the meanings conveyed directly speak to the vocation of the writer. To be available to God is the spiritual discipline of writing. To be available to others is the hospitality offered on the page and the sharing of one’s life with others on the page. To be vulnerable is that need to be open to where the writing leads us and where it pulls us in the first place, that need to struggle as we write.

Learning about the rule of availability and vulnerability started me thinking about it as a framework of my identity as a writer, as a scaffold to help shape my days and my work.

Writers commonly have a credo, whether it’s a formal written document or an inner working reference carried only in one’s head or heart, which guides them when making decisions about what they will write about and how. That credo might contain one’s core beliefs, thoughts about what brings the world benefit or harm, thoughts on what is important to attend to in living a human life, a recognition of personal interests and passions and what one uniquely can contribute, and so on. Having both a credo and a rule gives the writer a plumbline and suggests a means of accountability when pursuing the craft in a vocational and spiritual sense.

[Originally published, with some revision, in Northumbria Community. Caim. Spring 2014.]

~~~

[Photo is of a straw and stick cross hanging on the wall of an office at St. John's University in which I had the privilege to write for a week.]