Mercy is the softening that arises when love sees our suffering, our limits, and our humanity — and chooses not to punish, abandon, or condemn. (Author unknown)

Yes I understand we are currently living under a rule and culture that finds the above kind of language, soft, prosaic, and pointless.  Out of a hardened heart,  our governance promotes a 2026 that will have no place for mercy, forgiveness or grace.  The opening quote was forwarded to our household by a friend and I gratefully found it neither soft, or pointless.  We need to soften our hearts and strengthen our minds and bodies in 2026.  The narrow rigidity required of condemnation, retribution, rage, and faux greatness is guaranteed to kill body, soul, and nation. 

This writer had the privilege of spending holiday evenings in a family gatherings. Certainly the political leanings went all directions in our passionate crew; to the right, left, up, down and horizontal.  But the household was full with infants, young children, adults, tweeners, grand parents, grand uncles and aunts along with an assortment of opportunistic dogs.  The gatherings could have been simply noisy clatter, except for the loving energy that spread of mercy and forgiveness easing the sharp edges of the individual lives of a family living one and all in a very complicated world.  The richness of this family gathering fed my enthusiasm for the next years work despite the prognosis for this beleaguered United States.  

A modest Proposal for a Good 2026

The next year can turn this nation around should we decide to live in the organic community once again; person to physical person.  The difference would be to show some mercy for how unpracticed we all are in accepting one another in person in all our imperfection and stunning uniqueness  The divisions that could destroy us as community and nation are clearly superficial, political, and engineered to intercept the power of a merciful community.  We need to become both firm and forgiving at the same time. We have to learn again to really witness and respond to the stranger’s suffering without flinching.  We must be urgent about health and safety yet open to adventure and creativity.  This is the stuff we can’t legislate but must be lived out of our responsive ‘sense of good’. Mercy lubricates the gaps in belonging caused by difference.  Forgiveness will free us from the past to do the work of creating the next democracy.  As for grace, I fear we must resist  much of the burdensome, bitter, energy of 2025 with our whole hearts for bitterness and revenge are blocking the grace that made this experiment in liberty and democracy initially possible. Forgiveness, mercy and grace in 2026 would be very good indeed.