How can anyone love God and not love mercy?

It’s Mid-Week at Bedlam Farm, the temperature is supposed to soar up to 40 degrees today, and the National Weather Service says this means we are likely to have severe floods.

The weather is a source of perennial alarm, it seems. The Weather Channel is making lots of money. Even good news is not good, and never for long. And the news itself is uniformly bad and disturbing. And profitable.

I think it’s a time to rediscover mercy. To hear the words “mercy” and “compassion” lift me whenever I hear them and challenge me to be better. That would be perhaps the most patriotic thing I could do.

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In case many of you have not noticed, President Trump has begun the giant slide. He’s perfect for the media, and they really can’t bear to let him go. But some influential Republicans are challenging him, ignoring him, and questioning whether there isn’t a better choice. Ambitious governors are circling the corpse.

Politics in America is a blood sport, and every day, I hear and almost feel the wolves circling and howling. Politics is ruthless and draws vultures like blood; it hates nothing more than an aging loser and is merciless.

All those human footstools he surrounded himself with will be the first ones to chew on the bones and rush out the door.

For myself, I seek to find mercy and compassion in all of this argument. I’ve often failed in my life; I’m doing better and mean to do better still. The so-called Trump revolution has always been good for me, is shocked and demanded I find a response that was not angry or punitive. The Army of Good is a child of Trumpism, a reaction to it that wasn’t cruel or hateful.

I want to call the mercy in me as the country faces significant challenges and divisions. I want to see it as a chance to be better, not as a chance to celebrate other people’s pain or jump into the following argument.

Trump will soon no longer be something to hide behind for me and everyone else. But I live in the country; I see and hear how much people rallied to him and saw salvation in him. I know how millions of people love him and count on him to listen to them.

I wish there were a political savor, a man or woman who loves mercy and cares about the poor, as Jesus did, who possesses the kind of moral strength that agrees with the deepest values of many good people. I have this fantasy they are out there and will transcend red and blue, suitable and left, and help bring us together.

We live, writes Lamott, in Vengeance World: “An open, merciful heart is a setup for pain, sham and being mocked…” I know the truth in this. In our time, merciful people are seen as elitists and hypocrites. The very term has become negative.

But that doesn’t mean mercy is dead.

To hear those words  – “mercy, compassion” – can transform a day, writes Anne Lamott, a favorite spiritualist, and author for me.

The prophets claimed that the soul rejoices in what it already knows. I know deep inside of me that mercy is my salvation – as my granddaughter grows, as the ice caps melt.

Soon enough, Trump will be gone, he will leave a huge hole  – even cats only have nine lives – and we will be face to face with one another and with nothing in between them and us. An excellent opportunity to listen.

Where I wonder, has mercy gone in all of this? Why has it fallen from favor? We used to all want to help the poor. Now we can’t stand to talk with one another.

The time is upon me to put my money where my mouth is.

We can empathize and listen, even if we don’t want to. They seem to hate us, and we seem to hate them. Mercy is an icebreaker, always.

We need to find it again. I need to find it. I don’t want to be boasting; there is no reason for anyone to feel superior in this dreadful mess. We should all be ashamed of what has happened to our country; a bunch like this requires a lot of people to make.

I enjoy being learning and listening. I want to understand that he was essential to millions of people, and they will feel his demise acutely.

Donald Trump’s company is in grave trouble – his accountants just disavowed ten years of accounting work. Investigations are closing in on him from all corners, democracy and justice are slow and deliberate, but both are still alive in America and are working to bring this very dishonest man to justice.

He is perhaps the most self-destructive politician in history. Every time he opens his mouth, he builds a stronger case against himself.

His desperate efforts to block an investigation into the Capitol insurrection have failed. He seems to hate the very country he wants so badly to lead. A movement built on lies has no foundation. Somehow, truth always triumphs in the end.

I say this with grudging but genuine mercy in my heart because tens of millions of people have been betrayed, exploited, and abandoned by this man. Some of them are my neighbors.

They have legitimate concerns and complaints that will once again most likely be ignored and pushed aside by the corporations that are now running America and by so-called progressives with their heads forever up their butts.

Remember defunding all those police departments? Crime-riddled governments are hiring more police officers than ever; gun violence has exploded, yet again.

Trump takes millions of dollars from hard-working people who believe in him, but all the money goes to him, not them. The money these good people give him goes into his pocket and pays the army of lawyers trying to protect him,  not improving their lives.

Some of his followers, with his encouragement, have become hateful and seditious; many have grievances that need to be heard. Their grievances are old, deep, and bitter.

Donald Trump has broken the law all of his life and avoided accountability all of his life. I believe his time of reckoning is approaching, as it does throughout history when leaders choke on their hubris.

He and his family seem terrified now by the prosecutors circling and gathering information.

They spent half their lives on Fox News crying, whining, and pandering.

I have a good friend who has covered the Justice Department as a reporter, and he is convinced Trump will be snared in the massive sedition inquiries now taking place all over the country.

“It will get to him,” he said, “he is at the center of all of it. Everybody knows it, and he admits it every time he talks. He is proud of it.”

I love democracy and believe in it. I trust it, and I trust that my country will regain its faith in freedom and its fabled Constitution and do the hard work of coming together.

I write this because I do not share the bleak and hopeless outlook of people who care about the truth, the poor, the refugees, and the vulnerable. When we open our eyes and hearts, we can see the truth.

We have lost track of mercy,  forgotten how to feel it, been shamed into hiding it, and we need it back. Movements grow slowly, one person at a time. I can only speak for me.

We are mourning for mercy and rediscovering it. Yes, they will laugh at you and laugh at me, but understanding and compassion are much more powerful than hate. They are the answer, the only one that comes to me.

I believe mercy still lives and is vital and will return to our lives, politics, and schools.

These unhappy people are not stupid and are not bigots. They are desperate for someone to listen to them and care about them. They are about to lose their great white hope.

Demagogues appear when government lies to the people, and the people in rural America have been lied to by governments all of their lives.

Remember when all those politicians and economists promised that when all of those jobs went to China and Mexico, new and better ones would replace them?

It seems we are at a turning point, time to get to work in a meaningful and positive way.

How, I wonder, can anyone love God and not love mercy? What did the God most Americans say they believe in require of us but to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk humbly?

“How can you not love mercy?” asks Lamott in her book Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy? In the book, she can’t answer the question. Neither can I.

Loving mercy is not like loving dessert or cheese, says Lamott, one of the best spiritual writers in America. It’s essential to life.

If nothing makes people happier than service, especially the poor, then I acknowledge that I will have loving feelings if I do loving things. There it is.

I’m not sure many people even recognize the eternal presence of mercy in the human spirit any longer. Lamott believes that if she is starving to death for it, then her world is also.

I believe that. The return of mercy starts with me. I am starving for it, and I also have to think the world around me is.