Have Mercy

Have mercy on us. We live piecemeal lives, assembled out of fragments we find scattered haphazardly on the long roads we ceaselessly wander. Can such incompleteness ever triumph? Can you make us whole? Have mercy on us. We are forever completing the work of evolution... By now, we should have wings and fly freely over many landscapes: ports of call, homes away from homes, Eldorados, safe harbors, treasure islands, green plateaus, fields of the Lord, lanes redolent with flower aromas suffused in sunlight, Eden redux. Have mercy on us. We have yet to learn how to to live together. We cannot stomach each other. We accuse our other selves of cannibalism, sloth, idolatry, abominations. And when we look through a window at the green world beyond these bars, we are startled when the window suddenly becomes a mirror and we see a face staring at us twisted with hate, pockmarked with greed. We can feel our disease. Have mercy on us. We meant no harm really, when hundreds perished beneath the sword, when thousands went hungry and died before the new harvest arrived, when millions were neglected and lived out their short, brutish, nasty lives... Oh, this weight of history we must carry, this burden of hope and despair that has become a hunchback lodged in our bodies. We, who once dreamed of beauty, who once dreamed of pride of being, we, who... Have mercy on us. We are no less worthy than you are. We just lack the power to make our wishes real. Let there be light indeed, let it shine in all the crevices, over the murky waters of origin, into our deepest soul-space, where yet something may blossom that knows only the good, the true, the beautiful. Oh, we demand more than mercy: Give us a new being, complete, fully empowered to make of this world a shining place, a garden, a life everlasting. Until then... Have mercy on us.