Waking with open hands

In a world that lives like a fist,

mercy is no more than waking

with your hands open.

~Mark Nepo

In light of the recent tragedy of Uvalde, Texas and the many places of pain around the world and in our own personal worlds, the hurt of life seems so overwhelming. We have no words. We have no answers. It's even hard to know how to pray.

But we can open our hands and our hearts to cry out together "Lord, have mercy!"

and trust that the Holy Spirit prays in us.

The words of the following hymn are simple and sufficient for times such as this:

Kyrie eleison

Christe eleison

Lord have mercy

Christ have mercy

As you listen with an opened heart to this ancient prayer and supplication, trust that the Holy Spirit is interceding within you, beyond what you are able to express.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness;

for we do not know how to pray as we ought,

but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs

too deep for words.

Romans 8:26

In her poem "Heavy" Mary Oliver writes about how we might carry the sorrow and grief of our hearts.

May we each have strength to bear our suffering with God's help, making space for both the kind and troubled places. May we open our hands in mercy to one another.

Blessings and love to each of you.

Heavy by Mary Oliver

That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying

I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had his hand in this,

as well as friends. Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel, (brave even among lions), “It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it – books, bricks, grief – it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not, put it down.” So I went practicing. Have you noticed?

Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth?

How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe

also troubled – roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply?