When All Else Fails, Try Mercy

One of my teachers, Rev. Leslie Nipps, wrote recently about mercy as a tool for transformation and asks ‘Have We Forgotten Mercy?’ It was a question that struck me immediately and made me realize that yes, I have forgotten mercy as one of my tools for healing.

Rev. Nipps wrote in her blog, “The system had forgotten to have a place for mercy. But when it has a place for mercy, the system can move forward again. The whole system apparently needs a bit of a break. When it gets that break, it takes off the pressure, and therefore gives more room for courage. And courage leads to the next step…”

Rev. Nipps works with families but something about how she works with mercy really struck me this week. For years now I’ve watched my country’s social landscape become incredibly merciless; people getting ‘cancelled’, military border walls erected against children and desperate families, politicians with increasingly narrow polarized focus, and celebrities and public figures of all kinds being scrutinized for every last detail of their lives.

I’ve also seen a growing mercilessness in my own life and communities. People judging others and themselves with a harshness that shocks me, sending friends and loved ones to 'Never-See-Them-Again Island’ for common human behavior, scapegoating people out of our communities and hoping that will solve the problem. What is the problem, you ask? In my mind it’s just one thing; fear.

We are so so so afraid these days. We are afraid of our own leaders, of people not like us, of what’s happening to the earth, of how we’ll be perceived by others, of whether or not our income is stable or if we’ll have income at all, of the next medical emergency knowing we could never pay even with insurance, and on and on. The energetic frequency of fear is pretty big right now, in other words, and one of our main (and totally human) reactions to swimming in so much fear is to become a bit merciless; with ourselves, with each other, with strangers, and even with Spirit.

So I want to invite us to bring Mercy back into our lives, today, right now. In her book Living in Gratitude Angeles Arrien describes being merciful as having “a disposition of kindness and compassion that bestows unexpected forgiveness or clemency. Mercy alleviates distress through acts of charity or benevolence. Mercy and forgiveness are closely tied; forgiveness is an act of generosity and compassion that fosters mercy. When we extend acts of kindness and compassion to ourselves and others, we cultivate mercy and open more easily to our own forgiveness work.”

There is so much that feels stuck in our ‘systems’, as Rev. Nipps said. Or at least that’s how I feel; very very stuck. Politically, socially, emotionally, interpersonally, and even sometimes with Spirit. And yet, when I remember to try mercy, most of all with myself, something shifts. A new way opens, a door appears, something is softened, and the possibility of a different way of being with each other emerges again.

P.S. That’s Quan Yin up at the top, Goddess of infinite mercy and compassion, riding the dragon of anger, rage, bitterness, resentment and fear, i.e. the dragon conquered by mercy and now in service to a Goddess who sprang from the tears of a Buddha.