Lynn Bauman’s poetic rendition of Psalm 103:11 warms my heart:

As the heavens reach beyond earth and time,
we swim in mercy as in an endless sea.

I need to hang on to that deeply hopeful picture! Don’t you? Read it again and feel it. May that deep, old biblical truth ascend as new Christian memes lose their strength.

I am longing for sayings like this to descend:

“Only God can turn a mess into a message, a test into a testimony, a trial into a triumph, a victim into a victory.”

And

“I know God has a plan. I pray for direction to follow it, patience to wait on it, and knowledge to know when it comes.”

I don’t think those hopefully-descending proverbs are evil. And I can honestly say they have generally proven true in my life — unlike for many other people I know. But they are more based on outcomes than connection.

I object to the way those cliches reduce hope to something that must be proven. They beg skepticism: “What if the mess does not become a message?” and “We got divorced and it still hurts.” and “I lost my leg in Jordan and I am impoverished as a result.” You may be kinder than I am, but televised stories of trials that turned to triumph often feel a little thin or strained to me. And, what’s more, neglected children learn to turn their trials into triumph because there is no one taking care of them. They only trust themselves, not some parental God. They often spend a lifetime proving they are worth caring about. They hear “turn a trial into a triumph” and there first reaction may be “One more thing to do.”

What’s more, I personally object to the idea that God has a specific “plan” as if she were making sure we get to her preferred outcome: the right job, the safe neighborhood, the healthy family that all “prove” God is good (and us, as a result). Even more, I dread the denial I am called to master in response to terrible outcomes that must be “part of  God’s plan” for me — while Kim Kardashian gets rich. People who have chronic illnesses or some unapproved identity can, indeed, take some comfort that this was somehow God’s plan for them,  but most people don’t have that kind of willpower. Isn’t that why the Barbie theme song was such a hit?

The mercy is not about me

My commitment to wait on the Lord is not the source of my hope. My passionate acts of goodness and faith do not necessarily result in hope. I can’t really manufacture hope. The Lord is my hope.

For God alone my soul waits in silence,
    for my hope is from him. — Psalm 62:5

Now you’ve read that line. Try waiting in silence for 30 seconds.

Thanks. Now I want to reinforce what the Psalm says. We are not the source of our hope. I  dare not apply my meager sense of what outcome I need in order to have it.

Even though we are not the source of hope, the source is deep within me. It flows to me with unrestrained abundance. It is so endless it would be more accurate to say I am deeply within it. The Mercy is like an ocean.

Maybe we are all like the proverbial little fish who just heard a rumor and swam up to his mother and asked, “Mama, what is water? I have to have it!” We are immersed in mercy like that, the everlasting, living water of hope. We don’t lack hope because we are doing something wrong so it is far away, or because we are waiting for what we expect to be fulfilled some day in the far future and just need to be pateint. We lack hope because it is so close, like air, or like a feeling, such as love. It is more intimate than our own sense of being.

As the heavens reach beyond earth and time,
we swim in mercy as in an endless sea.

Maybe The Mercy is more real than we presently are

Cynthia Bourgeault in her book Mystical Hope, describes the “embodying fullness” in which we live as “the Mercy.” Mercy is the water in which we swim. Mercy is what we know of God and the light by which we know it.

I adopted “Mercy” as my main prayer when I got used to the Jesus prayer: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” As I was riding my bike through town, avoiding car doors, potholes and pedestrians, I realized one day that the curses rising up in me, which added to my frustration and sense of alienation, could be replaced with a one-word prayer that turned me toward my center, toward a realization that I was still in the water, still swimming. Now I am likely to face a distressing or even hope-draining moment with “Mercy!” So much better.

Bourgeault explains “the Mercy” so beautifully:

When we think of mercy, we should be thinking first and foremost of a bond, an infallible link of love that holds the created and uncreated realms together. The mercy of God does not come and go, granted to some and refused to others. Why? Because it is unconditional – always there, underlying everything. It is literally the force that holds everything in existence, the gravitational field in which we live and move and have our being.

Just like that young fish looking for water, we “’swim in mercy as in an endless sea.’ Mercy is God’s innermost being turned outward to sustain the visible and created world in unbreakable love.” We see that so clearly as Jesus turns himself out on the cross and God turns creation inside out to return him to life.

The interpreters of the work of Christ keep looking for words to describe what they experience. Paul says:

Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. — Romans 5:5

The basic work of the Christian ends up being a quest for the “water,” for an everyday, moment by moment experience of The Mercy.

It only sounds easy

Preachers often get up front and give the congregation a lesson in CBT: how to change you mind and thought patterns to get a Christian outcome. Some people get the lessons and many others get the shame of never effecting the perfect outcome. Either way, we are kind of in charge of making our own hope or responsible for the lack of it. The Jesus way is much deeper than what we can already do, if we just try hard enough.

If the narrow way of living in mystical hope were easy, we’d all be hopeful. It isn’t easy, but it is possible. The more we experience it, the more we get used to our true selves. Instead of living in a world run by scientific principles waiting to be proven again, or worse, a nobody-in-charge universe run by whoever manages to get into power, we become aware that we are “inside a warm-hearted and purposive intelligence, a coherence” of which we are part of the expression. We live in the creation of the Mercy.

Instead of God as a distant “other” we are restored to God as our “source and substance, the ground of our own arising, the foundation of our hope.” I want to talk more about how we might experience this reality in the coming weeks, since, for me, once experienced, it is undeniable and irreplaceable — and we really need it these days.

As I wrote that sentence, I was on hold with Citibank, which bought my credit card from Barclay’s, which did not process a fraudulent purchase for $15K (!!) before they unloaded me. Then Citi did not follow up after I called them. Now i was starting over a month later! Welcome to 2026. The climate-change-induced storm last week left a log from a dead tree in my back yard. The brazenly-corrupt Donald Trump is still president and desperate to undermine the elections which people think are their only hope.  Yes. I am turning into my irreplaceable source of hope as I write. It feels good. The turn is energizing. God is my hope.

So for now, I will leave you in hope. Whatever energy you exercise striving for some outcome you hope for would be better used for turning in to hope and swimming for joy in the Mercy. Then, when whatever outcomes emerge, miraculous or not, you can swim right up to them.

[Part One of this series: Mystical hope in a deteriorating world.]

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Today is Flannery O’Connor Day! Get to know her and her wild God at The Transhistorical Body.