Grow Mercy’s Yearly List of Gentle Observations and Humble Propositions

 

The individual is a phantom; in wonder and blunder we receive our selves through the eyes of others. Meaning, dear reader, my personal fulfillment is in your flourishing.

The first half of life is spent anchoring ourselves; the second half is spent unmooring ourselves.

The heart is a spotted pear — there’s no getting through without some bruising.

The mind is a sea star — moving its brilliant purple rays in multidirectional ways, and clinging, so often, to the same facade.

The soul at peace is paradise.

Beneath the surface of an ordinary day lies an infinite wellspring of meaning — this untold depth is what many call God.

Should you want to find God, which is to say, should you desire meaning, learn to love the earth and her array of inhabitants.

There are 25 flowers that symbolize peace, but only the Brown-eyed Susan symbolizes justice. Tend all of them well.

Tempting, in this climate, to trade the callus-building requirements of reality for the passive comfort of hoping.

Our favoured assumptions and cherished certainties should routinely be set on fire to see what rises from the ashes.

A tincture of cynicism is emancipating, but a full meal is constipating.

To laugh at yourself is to deinstitutionalize your ego.

The crushed grapes of relinquishment can sometimes be Beaujolais for the soul.

Press your face against your keyboard, canvas, or soapstone, it will open a door.

What seemed unthinkable is now obvious — both science and religion are converging on the essential fire. It’s time they had a heart-to-heart.

Every birdcall beckons, “Unveil your hearts!” “All creation cries for love!” is every cricket’s song.

Of course, we are falling; let us pray for companionship in the descent.

Death and dying — hard, hard, hard — and any kind of bromide is unfitting.

To counsel hope can sometimes be malpractice; to discount hope is spiritual dereliction.

The twin sister of praise is grief.

Aging changes chores into privileges and anxieties into prayers.

Despite the crazed magnificence of our vanities, our deepest longing is to be each other’s joy.

The Big Bang is God’s dancing body. The shimmering fallout is yours.

Put-your-love-where-there-is-no-love-and-you-will-find-love — is the only religion worth practicing.

Heaven, if we have the eyes for it, is us, in our unfolding inclusiveness.

A flash of insight can skyrocket your life, but don’t go publish a creed.

A glib apology creates another wound; an honest one is ointment.

Friendship is a full-bodied Cabernet; an acquaintance is only the label.

Pavement, like a hard heart, longs to be pierced by grass.

A side dish of skepticism is good for you, but a main course will give you gas.

Truth languishes in the theatres of politics, flourishes in the cries of children.

God is a verb, Jesus, the expositive. God is haiku, Jesus is free verse.

It’s time to let chrysanthemums weigh in on climate change.

Don’t drag around what’s perished — everything you need you’ll find along the way.

Don’t vomit outright — let the poison pass through and teach you, what to hate, what to tolerate.

Theology says I come from the heavens, poetry says I come from Springside, Saskatchewan.

Fame is tinsel, intelligence is a window, kindness is a cathedral.

Gender is both river and riverbed, and as enigmatic.

Don’t scold yourself; worry is a form of prayer.

Faith is about fanning the embers of a childlike perception. 

Distressingly, it’s taken me this long to see that my privilege is also my particular blindness.

A cultural obsession with sex is a sign of deep loneliness, lost intimacy.

We are lonely pilgrims, bottles in smoke — when finally our obsessions and addictions are spent — we discover that what is most alive is what we already had.

Beauty is a basket of grapes, happiness is champagne, and laughter the bubbles.

Poetry liberates paradox — reanimates a capacity for insight.

Art enlarges our being, cultivates imagination, which is why despots defund it.

Science and religion are humble in theory, but not when monetized.

Time is a tide that winds, folds, bends and swirls — vain to clutch it or try to stop it — but you already knew that.

Love, that embattled radiant thing — sometimes a gleaming gem, more often: arms that reach for us through the grief-fractured layers of our lives.

Our inner void — that canyon that yawns open when we’re alone and still — must not be skipped over, but leapt into.

You can love the earth and not love God, but you can’t love God without loving the earth.

Quantum entanglement may be one more name for God;

Snowflakes are the ghosts of fallen leaves.

Should you get anything absolutely right in life, it is critical you go back and correct it.

When we come into our beauty, we’ll admire acts of kindness over feats of cleverness.

To pray for the peace of our troubled world may or may not add a spark of hope to this flickering new year, but it’ll bolster your soul.

When we finally meet, I’m fine with a hug, if you are.

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Wishing you a beautiful New Year with rivers of awe and eddies of joy!

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A note: I’m not done yet, but over the coming months, I’ll be slowly retiring Grow Mercy. This Easter marks 20 years and some 1500 posts. And here, a deep bow to you, for reading and responding. 

I’ll not, however, be retiring the impulse behind Grow Mercy, but will be shifting, exploring, following a hybridized urge, and a genre to suit. For me, what these decades have increasingly revealed is how writing is a spiritual path. Now, for whatever time and energy remains for me, I’ll be tilting more toward The Ragged Psalmist, still inchoate, but the handle feels like it fits. I do hope you’ll subscribe.

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