“In a world that lives like a fistmercy is not more than waking with your hands open.” Mark Nepo

Keep awake! These are words that filter through the scriptures of Advent. Several years ago in the worshipping community in which I am blessed to be a part, I asked one of our members to periodically stand from his seat and shout out the words ‘keep awake’ during our worship hour. He is a bold guy and I knew he would have no problem with this request. We would be reading the scripture from Matthew about keeping awake, about how we never know when the Holy might show up, but I asked him to just randomly stand, shout it out, and then sit back down. 

The first time he did it there was stunned silence. People looked down at their laps and were perhaps wondering if this individual was having some kind of ‘episode’. The second time it happened, some jumped at the interruption, while others began to see where this was going and grins started sprinkling around the room. By the end of the service, the message was clear and there was a kind of anticipation of when the shout might come. And there were laughs all around. On that particular Sunday, the scripture had a new presence in the room. A jarring presence. A smack-you-over-the-head presence.

If we admit it we walk around through most of our days in a kind of semi-asleep state. Our minds are rarely in the moment in which we are breathing. Instead we are sorting out the tangled web of some past experience, words we wished we hadn’t said, words we had hoped we would. Or we are in some kind of time-travel state, projecting to the future imaging what might happen, fearful of what could, hopeful of what won’t. This kind of past/future living takes us away from what really is……this present moment. This breathing, heart-beating moment in which we are living right now. If the Holy broke into this moment, would we even be awake to it? 

Yesterday, I was interested to hear that Pope Francis had declared this coming year the Year of Mercy. I thought ‘Wow! Could we ever use that!’ A year of mercy…to one another…to those we love and those we call enemy…to our past…to our present…to ourselves. Mercy. It seems to me that the world is in deep need of mercy. The vitriolic speech that fills our airwaves and the hate language that is flying past our ears, sometimes settling and making a home in so many, has created a wound that can only be healed with mercy. “In a world that lives like a fist, mercy is not more than waking with our hands open.” writes the poet and wise one Mark Nepo.

Advent is a ‘hands open’ season. Advent holds the days for keeping awake to the silence, the simplicity, the beauty and the wonder of the in-breaking nature of God. We are invited, perhaps even urged, to stay in the moment, to resist the pull of the past and the push of the future. To travel slowly and with intention. To allow our fists to unclench and open with anticipation and hope of what goodness might be waiting in the darkest days.

If we can be present and awake, perhaps we can also take on the cloak of mercy and carry it into a new year. It seems to me that if we take seriously the birth many of us claim to celebrate at the end of our waiting, then carrying, indeed embodying mercy is one way to honor this prophet from Bethlehem. 

Mercy……may we be its bearers this day.