We live in strange times. When there is so much we cannot control - every little bit of normalcy is seized and hoarded. We clutch and grab for bits of security - some clinging to scripture, faith, family; some appear to be building fortresses of toilet paper and tubs of sanitizing wipes. But, lest we forget, we are not the first generation to face hardship. To be frightened by virulent plagues. To whisper fervent prayers for protection. To cry out for mercy amidst growing uncertainty. And to look for hope in the most hopeless situations. Like Abraham of old, "who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken..."
This week, I made some fabric face masks to send to our daughter-in-love who is a nurse. Several of our family claim to be ministers - she's the real one. Her sanctuary, a children's hospital; her vestments, scrubs; her sermons, louder than words. As I was sorting through a box of quilt scraps for the project, I found an issue of The New Yorker magazine from August 17, 1998. It is permanently folded to page 53 where this poem is found. I had hoped to somehow translate the poem into a quilt which never materialized. Could be I just needed to squirrel it away for safekeeping - to be found "in the fullness of time."
The Mercy The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island Eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy." She remembers trying to eat a banana without first peeling it and seeing her first orange in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her with a red bandana and taught her the word, "orange," saying it patiently over and over. A long autumn voyage, the days darkening with the black waters calming as night came on, then nothing as far as her eyes could see and space without limit rushing off to the corners of creation. She prayed in Russian and Yiddish to find her family in New York, prayers unheard or misunderstood or perhaps ignored by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness before she woke, that kept "The Mercy" afloat while smallpox raged among the passengers and crew until the dead were buried at sea with strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom. "The Mercy," I read on the yellowing pages of a book I located in a windowless room of the library on 42nd Street, sat thirty-one days offshore in quarantine before the passengers disembarked. There a story ends. Other ships arrived, "Tancred" out of Glasgow, "The Neptune" registered as Danish, "Umberto IV," the list goes on for pages, November gives way to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore. Italian miners from Piemonte dig under towns in western Pennsylvania only to rediscover the same nightmare they left at home. A nine-year-old girl travels all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. She learns that mercy is something you can eat again and again while the juice spills over your chin, you can wipe it away with the back of your hands and you can never get enough.
- - by Philip Levine, circa 1998
A poem written over twenty years ago about events over a hundred years ago, found in a seldom opened box, page-open-face-up. A strangely relevant, timely reminder, for the now. Prayers in the dark, contagious disease, days of quarantine, kind strangers, and mercy. Sweet mercy that spills down faces. Abundant mercy that does not run out. Precious mercy that gives birth to hope. Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Selah.
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