Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Beautiful music. Wonderful choir. Kyrie, Eléison. Words that I want to hold on to in the aftermath of massive destruction and loss from earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis, words that I want to believe in. I want to give all the sadness in Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia, New Orleans, Haiti… to something, someone beyond myself. The sorrow, grief, and pain are too much to imagine, too much to bear. Can’t I please give it away?
Lord, have mercy. Kyrie, Eléison.
But I’m a Unitarian Universalist! I can’t just use words to blindly hand-over care or responsibility. I can’t escape the travails of being human with handsome words and beautiful music. I need to understand. I need to know. I need to do something.
Lord, have mercy. Who or what is Lord? Technically, it’s just a title, not a person or a god. But often we give this title to Jesus. And for most of Christianity’s history, Kyrie, Eléison has been known as the Jesus Prayer.
Lord, have mercy.
Mercy.
I told a group of friends the other night that I was going to preach on mercy. Even though the group included a former monk, their response was silence. I waited. More silence. It almost cleared the table, until someone showed mercy and changed the subject.
I went to another group of friends, which included a couple Catholics and a nun. I figured they would know about mercy. Over lunch I told them my plan to preach on mercy. I got an immediate response, “Why would you preach on that! Mercy is pity. And we don’t need more pity.”
After more reflection, and a round of coffee, they started to take a new angle – forgiveness. But thinking about the Japanese situation, I couldn’t figure out who needed to forgive whom for what. And pity certainly wasn’t what I was feeling. My sense of grief was much more profound.
Of course I could have joined the ranks of Rush Limbaugh fans and listened as he laughed and mocked the refugees.[i] Or, I could have said “amen” in response to a Tokyo governor who said the disaster was divine retribution.[ii] But these reactions felt utterly repulsive.
I needed to know about mercy.
At its root, the word mercy is derived from ancient Hebrew and Arabic languages. In traditional form, three consonants form the root and by adding another consonant, new words are created, expanding the core meaning. RHM are the core consonants for several words, including mercy. The root, RHM, or rehem, means “womb”. The root for mercy is womb.[iii]
How perfect. In my shock and grief watching the devastation unfold in Japan, I wanted to be held as in a womb. My shared vulnerability as a human being had been exposed and I wanted to be held in the shelter, safety, and love. I wanted everyone to be held. Mercy, yes.
I’ll leave it to you to unscramble the gender semantics of the womb and Jesus in the Jesus Prayer, Kyrie, Eléison. But please, hold onto mercy.
In our culture, mercy is often confused with pity as uncritical, sentimental benevolence. Just as my friend had rebuked mercy as pity, we often think of showing mercy as feeling sorry for someone, or feeling sorry for ourselves. We have lost the original meaning of rehem which envelopes us with the sense of tenderness and strength found in the warmth, protection, and safety of the womb.
It might be easier to consider another word that is based on rehem – compassion. Compassion is the plural of rehem.[iv] This is fascinating to me because you can’t do plural alone. To have compassion, you must be in relationship. The archetypal image for compassion is the maternal relationship of mother and child. This isn’t a casual relationship. Its origin is deep, deep, into the womb.
The Hebrew Scriptures give us an excellent example of the depth of true compassion. Two women and a baby were brought before King Solomon. The king was asked to judge to which mother the baby belonged. The two women argued their case and King Solomon issued the verdict: the baby would be cut in half and half a baby would be given to each woman. Deeply moved for her son, the real mother told the king to save the baby and give him to the other woman. Meanwhile the other woman demanded, “Kill the baby” so neither would have a son. In his wisdom, King Solomon gave the baby to the real mother whose compassion burned deep within her. She would rather give her son away than see him killed. Great was her compassion.
In Latin and Greek, compassion takes another twist. It means to suffer, undergo, or experience. Compassion means to endure [something] with another person. I must put myself in somebody else’s shoes, to feel their pain as though it were my own – and to enter generously into their point of view.[v]
I am not in Japan. I cannot enter into the refugee’s mind or environment. But I am full of compassion, as I feel connected as a human being also living at the edge of the Ring of Fire. My heart aches with the people.
I must do something.
My Unitarian Universalist faith draws me to the practical. I could give my care and responsibility away, I could assign blame to supernatural powers, or I could hide my shared vulnerability and become cynical and laugh at other’s distress. Instead, I choose to examine my faith and reassert my commitment that we are all ultimately related. We all come from the womb. With all our frailties, how could we do anything else but have mercy and compassion.
But these words feel a little ooey-gooey. What does compassion look like in the real world? How do people connect as if they had enough mercy for the other person, like the mother of the baby in the King Solomon story? What would mercy and compassion look like?
- Albert Einstein, the great genius of science, invited the African American opera singer, Marian Anderson, to stay in his home when she came to sing in Princeton because the best hotel was segregated and wouldn’t have her.[vi]
- Two weeks after 9/11, after having dinner at a restaurant, the chef gave Stephen Jay Gould and his wife a bag containing 12 apple brown betty desserts. The chef asked the couple to give them to the workers searching the rubble. The Goulds gave them out and the last recipient, a soot-blackened fire fighter, tasted the dessert and said, “Ah… still warm.”[vii]
- Software engineers at Google asked to use their company allotted 20% creative time to invent a way to find people in times of disaster. After the earthquake in Haiti, it took the team 72 round-the-clock hours to create People Finder. The tool was available one-hour after the recent Japanese quake.[viii]
- And in Japan this week, people lined up for their first hot soup since the tsunami. Each person took only one cup. No one got back in line for seconds. Food is shared. Everyone is fed, even if it means each person gets less.
It is important to share stories like this when it is so easy to become overwhelmed by the world around us. Compassion – and mercy – reminds us of our relationship to each other and to our higher calling.
All the world’s great religions have a golden rule. In 500 BCE, Confucius taught consideration and asked his disciples to practice all day and every day. In 400 BCE, the Buddha talked about nirvana, a blowing out of passions, desires, and selfishness. Buddhism’s four elements of immeasurable love are loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and even-mindedness. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam also have golden rules. Each presents compassion as natural to human beings and each calls us to set aside our own ego in empathetic consideration of others.[ix]
Kyrie, Eléison. Lord, have mercy. May we all have mercy and compassion.
At his meditation center at Plum Village in France, Thich Nhat Hanh has a random bell rung three times a day. When this mindfulness bell rings, everyone pauses what they are doing and breathes mindfully three times before returning to whatever they were doing. Three conscious breaths.[x]
I wonder if we heard a mindfulness bell everyday, if we could take three deep breaths and think about mercy and compassion. Think about it. If a mindfulness bell rang in the morning, we could set our intent. The bell in the middle of the day would remind us to act on our intention. At night, the last bell would remind us to reflect on how we exercised our intent to have compassion that day.
If we heard a bell and thought of compassion…
- Would we suddenly see the homeless person sleeping under the bridge on our way to work?
- Would we find creative ways to break the cycle of poverty?
- Would we have time to visit with the senior who is alone?
- Would we invent something truly useful like the People Finder?
- Would we give all children a quality education?
I may not be able to help the people in Japan, although my heart is filled with compassion. What I can do is act in a compassionate way right here at home. And if enough people did that, compassion and mercy would reach all around the world.
That is how I put my faith into action. Everyone is dealing with something difficult. We all need compassion. We all need mercy. Kyrie, Eléison.
(bell)
I close with words from Mary Oliver.
“When I cried for Help” (Red Bird)
Where are you, Angel of Mercy?
Outside in the dusk, among the flowers?
Leaning against the window or the door?
Or waiting, half asleep, in the spare room?
I’m here, said the Angel of Mercy.
I’m everywhere – in the garden, in the house,
and everywhere else on earth – so much
asking, so much to do. Hurry! I need you.
Kyrie, Eléison.
Blessed be and amen.
___
[1] “Rush Limbaugh Mocks Japan Quake Refugees.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/16/rush-limbaugh-mocks-japan-refugees_n_836384.html
[1] Gilgoff, Dan. “Tokyo governor apologizes for calling quake divine retribution.” http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/15/tokyo-governor-apologizes-for-calling-quake-divine-retribution/?hpt=C2
[1] Armstrong, Karen. Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. Alfred A. Knopf. New York. 2010. pg. 19.
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=K3jLfQP4pF0C&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=rehem+RHM&source=bl&ots=zEfiS0_JhU&sig=DC5oFjTFpW1U5Sg8OVCLpNhM5mw&hl=en&ei=L7mCTfevJpLEsAPl6NyCAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=rehem%20RHM&f=false
[1] Armstrong. pg. 9.
[1] TED Talks. Krista Tippett: Reconnecting with Compassion. http://www.ted.com/talks/krista_tippett_reconnecting_with_compassion.html
[1] Pescan, Rev. Barbara J. “Only by Your Presence” (sermon)
[1] “Google gives 20% to Japan crisis.” http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/17/technology/google_person-finder_Japan/indexhtm?hpt=T2
[1] Armstrong. pg. 11.
[1] Pescan. Rev. Barbara J. “What to Do When Nothing Can be Done?” (sermon posted on uua.org) 
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