"Pope Francis says the name of God is mercy. Our name was mercy, too, until we put it away to become more productive, more admired and less vulnerable. We tend to forget it's still there. It's our unclaimed selves, in the Lost and Found drawer, access to another frequency, like a tuning fork. It startles you when you hear it. You look up and around and respond. It's part of human nature, the startle reflex. Grace and mercy build on this, on nature. We startle awake. This is part of the mystery, that the humane, humanity, human bodies, are where we experience transcendence and God, restoration, the inclination to serve those who are suffering. We reach out as we are reached out to.
"This all looks so ordinary that you might miss it. It's so daily. You don't need special music and a Hollywood production and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. You don't need the Canadian fjords, the Grand Canyon, a newborn baby, although these can be helpful. . . . Immediacy and inspiration can be found in the dairy aisle at Safeway. It probably looks like people saying hello, making eye contact, letting others go first. Ordinary human daily ways, but moving more slowly. It looks like me with a few free minutes, deciding not to fill something in. Instead, I may close my eyes, drop to a quieter plane, or look up into a tree or the sky. Even a moment's transcendence changes us. Everything is different afterward because we deep-dove, were there in downward, inward, higher places. So we know now. We remember."
