Lord, great and awesome God,
you who keep your merciful covenant toward those who love you
and observe your commandments!
We have sinned, been wicked and done evil;
we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws.
We have not obeyed your servants the prophets,
who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes,
our fathers, and all the people of the land.
Justice, O Lord, is on your side;
we are shamefaced even to this day:
we, the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem,
and all Israel, near and far,
in all the countries to which you have scattered them
because of their treachery toward you.
O LORD, we are shamefaced, like our kings, our princes, and our fathers,
for having sinned against you.
But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!
Yet we rebelled against you
and paid no heed to your command, O LORD, our God,
to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.”  (Dn 9:4b-10)

The lament of Daniel captures for me the picture of where we find ourselves in today’s world.  It seems that every day we hear of yet another violent outburst of hate that has destroyed lives and shown us once again the extent to which bigotry will go in an attempt to prove its hideous lie.  And yet, how do we respond?  How should we respond?  What are the questions we should be asking?  I don’t have answers.    I do feel shamefaced.  Not because I don’t have answers but because I know that I am not innocent.  Somehow my own inaction and projects of self-protection contributes to the rebellious spirit which runs away and strikes out at others.

“We have rebelled and departed…”  I wonder why?  What is it within us that convinces us that stinginess is the only way to ensure that we don’t lose that which we think we have?  What makes us think that there’s not enough to go around?  Why do we take our sticks and draw the line in the sand and then forbid others to cross.  Why do we build structures that both confine those within to a point of suffocation and exclude by pushing out those whom are not welcome in the structure?  How strong do we build these lying edifices?  And what is it that we are trying so hard to protect anyway?  We believe the structure is strong and don’t see that it is cracked and ready to fall.  How could something so flimsy cause so much pain and violence and division and death?  The lie is behemoth!

Where is the hope?  I don’t think it is ever far away.  Indeed, I believe that if we know how to look for it, we discover it right here.  I think Daniel’s lament itself tells us right off, where the hope is…”Lord, great and awesome God, you who keep your merciful covenant.”  This is the starting point actually.  Everything else follows this divine standard.  So, we rebel and depart – or try to – from this Divine Essence of mercy.  “But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness…”

Luke (Lk 6:36-38) underlines this very point, as we hear Jesus say quite simply to his disciples…”

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

I find it interesting that Jesus does not say become merciful, but instructs the disciples to BE merciful, just as God IS merciful.  For me, this seems to hint that actions of mercy are not things that we ‘come up’ with like we have to make them up, but rather mercy is something that comes from within, welling up inside and our task is to un-tap the reservoir of mercy that is within us.  This is God in us as Divine mercy waiting to be released.  It is being who we are, hearkening back to the Genesis story of being created in God’s very image…”Then God said: Let us make* human beings in our image, after our likeness “(GN 1: 26). 

How do we begin to recognize the preciousness of ourselves as God’s image?  How do we let ourselves become release valves for the God who created us in the Divine image, which means as wellsprings of compassion?  From the standpoint of the world and the horrific news stories that we hear daily, we seem so far away from this realization.  Perhaps many do not believe that this is even true.  We hunker down in doubt, fear, and violence.  But, what if we tested it out, i.e., tried to follow some of the guidance that Jesus is giving his disciples in the Gospel:

Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”

This is not a ‘going out’ to look for some answer that will resolve this.  We are turning outward when we should be looking into ourselves and each other.  Isn’t this where Jesus is pointing – the Heart of God as it resides within each of us.  Can we dare believe that God does take up residence in our soul?  Can we trust God in ourselves? And if so, how great would the risk be to try to engage in the Divine Source that is present within us and all created in the Divine image?  What would waves of compassion look like flowing out from within us into a world that seemingly cannot recognize it?

This Divine Flow, whose headwaters lie within us, multiplies outward, overflowing with a power to transform.  There will be pain involved though.  Because we hold onto the lie of separateness and ‘otherness’ so tightly, loosening that grip will take some effort and the joints may be locked up.  There is, though, that curious but wonderful aspect about compassion, once it starts flowing it picks up momentum.  And once the flowing power of compassion begins, it has the power to not only heal but to create something altogether New!  What was once arthritic rigidity can become compassionate and holy flexibility.

The Catholic mystic and proponent of interreligious dialogue, Raimon Panikkar, speaks about this flow in terms of connecting to the Divine Source, where “I am one with the source insofar as I too act as a source by making everything which I have received flow again.[i]”  It is those gifts that are given and then given again overflowing without measure.   It’s not about ownership and self-collecting but rather swimming in the flow by sharing that divine uniqueness that each of us has been given.

There is no magic wand that can be waved that will allow us to discover and then to release the Divine compassion that is the source of our lives, but we can cultivate ways to authentically lament the ways that we rebel and depart from ourselves, each other and God, and in doing so begin to TRUST – i.e., release the only true thing that we can share – a mercy that is abundant compassion with a power to recreate itself over and over again.

In this work, we can begin to dismantle the illusory separateness that we grasp so tightly.  Then perhaps we will cease killing the sacred spaces in our world –PEOPLE – by recognizing and honoring the Divine space within each one of us waiting to be un-tapped and flowing!

[i] Raimon Panikkar, CHRISTOPHANY (Orbis Bks, New York, 2004), p. 116.