2016.06.12 The Quality Of Mercy

A MERCY BLESSING

May God give you:
For every challenge, Wisdom;
For every stony path, Strong Shoes;
For every storm, a Rainbow;
For every hardship, Support;
For every journey, Faithful Companions;
For every concern, Hope;
For every blessing, Gratitude;
For  every prayer, an Answer;

And may all life's seasons bring God's
        gift of MERCY to
You and those you love.
          AMEN
 (Based in part from an Irish Blessing. Michele Aronica, RSM)

Last week I was on retreat at Mercy Center in Madison, CT.  This blessing was framed and in each room. I awoke to it very morning and its truth sank into me. This is all I want and hope for: not that stony paths, challenges, hardship and all the rest will bypass me, but that I will have gifts to help me keep going, especially faithful companions and Hope. Hope, to me is the greatest of the Big Three spiritual gifts: faith, hope, and love. (St. Paul thought love, but he might've been wrong, ya know!)

  When I told someone that I'd been on a silent retreat for a week, she said, "A whole week?"—followed by, "You and Dick?" Some things are quite astonishing. I told her we weren't rigid about it, and that we convened each evening to sit outside and chat, or just sit and gaze at the natural beauty of the sound stretching before us and all the glorious trees that adorn the Mercy property. I added: "You know the silence, after a while, becomes a friend, one whose comfort you begin to appreciate like an over-soul." (Over-soul is a Jewish descriptor of the affects of a true Sabbath rest.)

Mercy is different from compassion or sympathy, or even empathy. Mercy has the power to soothe, season, or soften all life's aches and pains, all our passions, strivings, even the great and righteous judgments we make, and the social justice causes for which we labor.  James, the most practical book in the New Testament, makes a big deal about the unity of faith and deeds—one no good without the other. Yet even James reminds us, almost casually, "For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; . . ."    And btw: ". . . mercy triumphs over judgment." (James 2:13b)  [Italics mine]

Biblically, mercy is translated as divine lovingkindness toward all living things. In Hebrew it's chesed, and in Greek eleo, both rooted in the word which means guts or womb (racham and splagchnizoai)".  I do so love words.

And from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

By all means, do not forget to be merciful with yourself, please. Godde will assist.  

2012.10.21 Who Me.....a Nun?

    It's my 20th anniversary as a nun—sort of. 
    I became an Associate of the Religious Sisters of Mercy in October of 1992 not long after I learned that Roman Catholic women’s religious orders had an associateship program by which lay people could join them in prayer and commitment to works of mercy. 
    The charism of the Mercies seemed perfect to me. I’m always in favor of mercy since I need so much myself and can be quite merciless with myself and others, though I try to keep that impulse a secret when it arises—except toward my husband...he says.  But the specifics of the Mercy vision were the attraction: a lifelong commitment to contemplative prayer and ministry that connected the ignorant with educational resources, the ill and infirm with healing resources, and the impoverished with economic resources.
    Knowledge, health, money and Godde all wrapped up in the spirituality of Jesus of Nazareth my chief guru.  
    My fascination with Catholicism began when I was a young child and my Catholic aunt came to visit. I used to tiptoe up to her bedroom door which she left ajar and peek in. She knelt down next to her bed and began to mumble and rattle a chain of beads.  Then she put on a black sleeping mask like the Lone Ranger’s and crawled into bed for the night.  
    I was drawn into some kind of spell by what I thought was magic . My aunt called it “saying my prayers.” My mother said they were “Catholic” prayers.  My Presbyterian church had prayers of course but these “catholic” ones seemed mystical, and embodied at the same time.  I saw the same thing at Mass.  These worshipers were active. They moved their bodies, kneeling, standing, folding their hands, bowing and walking up the aisle together to eat a holy meal at the altar.  In my church we mostly just sat for everything. They even brought the communion meal to you on little trays.

    As a twenty-something I took instruction to become a Roman Catholic, a convert like my aunt had been. It seemed I could have the spirituality and the ritual, but not without just the right amount of too many rules—and a pretty clear sense that women were important to clean up and set up but not allowed to serve at the altar. 
    This church of my infatuation was too tight for me, so, with the help of a college chaplain,  I discovered the Episcopal Church where I could have the sacrament of the Mass with all its grandeur and grace— and fewer rules.  There was a chance for women to be priests in that tradition, so much smaller and more supple than the huge Roman Catholic behemoth of an institution.
    I was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1988 after a colossal struggle with that church’s institutional bias against the presence of women invading  the centuries old inner sanctum of an all-male priestly caste of male privilege and authority. My little “jihad” was worth it. Today I’m proud of my small and limber Episcopal church—Anglo-but-still-Catholic church, still wrestling with integrity and threats of schism over issues of inclusivity.  And I’m proud and happy to be an Episcopal priest.
    Experimenting recently with an online invitation to write a six-word memoir I jotted down quickly: Wannabe Catholic nun turns Episcopal priest.  Pretty good summation.
 
    Lingering longings, however, persisted, not strongly just small heart tugs. I never felt called to be a religious sister. The Episcopal church has monastic orders for women I might have joined if I  hadn’t also been dying to have kids.  It was the Catholic connection I got wistful about from time to time especially when I went on retreats at Mercy Center in Connecticut and received spiritual direction from a wise, witty, and utterly French Jesuit priest named Pierre Wolff who guided me so well in the ways of Jesus Christ that I became smitten, not with Pierre or even Jesus, but with the whole astonishing God-in-the-flesh thing.
    One of the Mercy sisters sniffed out my heart’s desires, as good nuns can do. She told me about associateship and I leapt at the chance.  In the Extended Mercy Handbook Admission Criteria, the first eligibility criterion for associates reads,”be practicing members of a Christian faith, ordinarily, the Roman Catholic faith.”  
    ORDINARILY jumped off the page. It didn’t mean necessarily or always; it meant usually.  So I could be unusual and quite ordinary.

     Mercy Foundress Catherine McAuley’s leadership style was refreshing. Though every ounce a leader, Catherine did not like the Mother Superior title; she insisted on the dignity and integrity of every single woman who joined the order—also each one’s need for freedom to develop fully as a sister and a daughter of God.  This was advanced thinking in her day and certainly didn’t match any traditional patriarchal church leadership models I’d known. 
    Freedom within authority best facilitates spiritual and emotional growth. Catherine believed  this truth, and governed accordingly.  I liked that a lot!  Catherine was also fond of saying “Mercy is justice in tears.” Not original to her, but what wisdom ever remains original? Mercy has no patents or copyrights. She begins in wonder, and never stays put for long. 
    Taking instructions, something ordinarily expected, I bristled when our teacher Sister Grace Mannion called God “the divine conniver.”  It was the Protestant in me, but it didn’t arrest my journey; later Grace, whom I’ve come to regard with admiration and affection, and I laughed about it.

    I was inducted in a Commitment Ceremony 20 years ago almost to this day at the chapel of the Mercy headquarters in West Hartford, Connecticut.  I was one of several inductees, mostly female with a couple of brave husbands in tow.  It was a simple ceremony of prayer and the presentation of a  Mercy pin and a handbook—more rules and expectations.  A reception with lovely and loving food followed, because every holy occasion must always have food to remind us of our humanity and keep us humbly grateful.
    That day I felt complete as if I’d come full circle. I belonged, sort of.  I’ve always been welcomed and embraced, and an anomaly at the same time. Guess that’s my lot, a religious mix.

    Isn’t this how we all are supposed to be in order to blend back into the whole community of Creation?  

    Extraordinary!

2011.04.27 Becoming Mercy

I don’t remember what I wanted to be when I grew up. It wasn’t a princess. Maybe a horsewoman.

Maybe I just wanted to be the apple of my dad’s eye or at least not so much the apple of my mother’s eye.

Maybe I just wanted to be left alone to create—mischief, dramas, daring games with creepy plots, even liturgies—anything my imagination could stretch to.

I imagined God at just three. I was the apple of God’s eye, but I didn’t get the implications till I actually did grow up and into a religious vocation.

One thing I’m sure I didn’t want to be when I grew up was a nun or a priest. Now I am both—sort of.

I was drawn to the richness of the Roman Catholic Mass but found its misogynous politics stifling. Anglocatholic Episcopalians had the liturgy and hopeful politics so I became an Episcopal priest.

To satisfy my earlier Catholic leanings I became an Associate of the Religious Sisters of Mercy (RSM,) a Catholic order. BUT associates, according to their guidelines, are “ordinarily” Roman Catholic—“ordinarily” is a permissive word.

To be an Associate one makes a commitment to live a mercy way of life. Be compassionate and just. Not hard really, but hard as hell some days. A liaison Sister with whom you covenant helps. You keep each other honest to mercy.

I was attracted to the Mercies because their foundress Catherine Macauley, up for canonization btw, had a simple vision to help the poor. "Poor" is not restricted by an economic definition.

The Mercy vision and mission is to work and pray for connection: of the poor with resources, the ignorant with education/knowledge, and the sick with healing. The Holy Spirit Herself is the Great Connector and helps the process along.

This fit with my early Catholic leanings and it fits with my own ministry as priest, counselor, author and spiritual director.

Mercy satisfies my three guiding Muses: Spirituality, Religion and Feminism.

FEMINISM is happy because most of the “poor” are women. RELIGION is happy because many people are ignorant of the graces of sane and good religions and need good prayer guidance and teaching. SPIRITUALITY is happy because every soul is wounded to varying degrees of severity, and we all need healing.

To find out more about becoming an Associate of Mercy go to their website. Mercy Associates are “ordinarily” women.

Pray then click. www.sistersofmercy.org