Grow Mercy’s year-end list of gentle propositions

That a word of mercy is a tender embrace;
that to be human is to be, at any given moment, filled with joy, angst, wonder, madness, sorrow, want, majesty, misery, boredom, radiance, resentment, love;
that pavement longs to be pierced by grass;
that we are not agents of unalloyed originality but inchoate composites of desires, bits of wisdom and knowledge, knowingly and unknowingly borrowed from a host of others;
that in wonder or blunder, we receive our lives through the eyes of others;
that intelligence can be admired, but kindness should be revered;
that despite the crazed magnificence of our vanities, our screwy, clingy, messed-up lives, our deepest desire is to be each other’s joy;
that intellectual convictions can be overturned by spiritual experience;
that a revelation, a flash of insight, some broad clearing suddenly lit up by love or beauty or forgiveness, can shift your life forever, or flop back down like an expired fish; that faith is about fanning the embers of the former;   
that poetry can reanimate a capacity for surprise;
that should you want to find God, love the earth and her array of inhabitants, which is to say, should you want to find meaning, turn the ego outward;
that miracle is still the best word to describe life’s origin;
that the big bang is a model half-way succeeding in describing our oneness;
that leaves are snowflakes ensouled.
that laughter is champagne;
that beauty is both grape and bubble;
that doubt is necessary and healthy but the spell of skepticism is a sickness;
that the certainties in our heads must be held by tentative hands;
that truth still flourishes beyond the theatres of commerce and public affairs;
that cynicism in small doses can be good for you but a steady diet is constipating;
that reason needs a trellis, faith needs a frame and theology needs poetry;
that we are lonely people still searching, proven by our obsessions, impositions and addictions;
that all great art enlarges our existence;
that science is humble in theory but not so much in practice and that this is what it has in common with religion;
that things repair themselves if they are unplugged for a while, including humans;
that God is a verb and Jesus expository;
that time is a line that winds, folds, bends and swirls;
that death is hard, hard, hard and every explanation unfitting;
that my privilege is also my particular blindness;
that love is not a gleaming gem found at the crown of a mountain, but comes to find us in the grief-fractured layers of our lives;
that yesterday I knew many great and grand principles of life, but today all I know is that a hug can be healing.


Happy New Year! With a hug.

18 Comments

  1. You’re the best Stephen. Your words cut to the bone. They have a way of stirring me up even when I don’t even consciously know what I’m reading. I tend to go back for a second pass, taking it all in and thinking what a talent and insight you have.
    Thanks for your posts Stephen, and blessings for the New Year!

  2. Stephen, Your words and hugs are both healing to the soul. Good riddance to 2018. I long for 2019 to be better, that I find ways to make it better for friends, neighbors and the planet. Let us all remember that “our deepest desire is to be each other’s joy” and hope that we all find “capacity for surprise” in the new year. And may your words and consoling messages continue to come our way. Happy New Year!

  3. Steve, what truth you tell in these beautiful and insightful reflections. Thank you for these propositions to reflect on as I greet 2019.

  4. “that love is not a gleaming gem found at the crown of a mountain, but comes to find us in the grief-fractured layers of our lives;”
    and
    “that death is hard, hard, hard and every explanation unfitting ”

    = yes – this so continues to resonate as the losses are still raw – and as we also prepare to go and give presence and comfort to a young mom saying good bye to her mother (estranged or not she was her mother).

    you do have a wonderful way with words Steve! may they continue in 2019!

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