Be Merciful

Kind and Generous
by Nathalie Merchant
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You've been so kind and generous
I don't know if I can give it
for your kindness, I'm in debt to you
for your selflessness, my admiration
for everything you've done, you know I'm bound
I'm bound to thank you for it...

You've been so kind and generous
I don't know if I can keep on giving
for your kindness I'm in debt to you
and I never could have come this far without you...

for everything you've done you know I'm bound
I'm bound to thank you for it...

I want to thank you for so many gifts you gave with love and tenderness
I want to thank you
I want to thank you for your generosity, the love and the honesty that you gave me...

I want to thank and show my gratitude, my love and my respect for you...

I want to thank you
I want to thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank
you...

"Be merciful, just as (also) your Father is merciful." --Bible, Luke 6:36. We don't often experience mercy directly. It seems so out of the everydayness of life--so dramatic. And it is. Yet most all faiths and certainly, the biblical writer, Saint Luke thought about it enough to write on the subject. In most traditions, and also in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the understanding of mercy is deeply akin to the understanding of compassionate love.

A long time ago it was the experience given to me to understand this deeply for the first time, in my young, twenty-something life. I made a dear friend in college. However over time, there was a parting of the ways. A long time passed, more than 15 years, marriages and children to boot. One day while driving, the Natalie Merchant song Kind and Generous came over the radio. In my Simple Mind, I was so well taken back to that time long ago. I meditated on it many months, each time the hearing of this song set me to thought, and I thought.

Eventually I knew what it was to teach me. Now more than 18 years passed and we met again; it was a momentary oneness to my great surprise, and a gift. While I deserved less, my friend gave me more; while I deserved contempt, my friend showed compassion. From a deeply religious family, my friend learned, perhaps, long before me, that mercy is great and its loving kindness is long.
 My friend named his child after me--unbeknown to me before the day we met again. I felt then the blinding, white grace of God's mercy.

Peace to all. Be merciful, for your Lord, God is merciful.