When a Prayer for Mercy Becomes a Fight

When A Prayer for Mercy Becomes a Fight: A Conflict Manager’s Thoughts

First, I have to say that I am not writing this from a political standpoint.  I’m writing this as a conflict manager who knows that all humans suffer, all humans have struggles and a lot of humans struggle more than others.   Struggle is hard to see.  Easy to judge but hard to look at.   

I write this from a place of knowing that I was born to blue collar people who eked by and while my parents couldn’t afford to keep me in fashionable clothing – (I wore hand me downs and clothes from an auction until I was 14 and could work to buy my own clothes), I had food. I had a roof over my head.  I had a bed to lay in.  Sometimes I was hungry, but I had 3 meals a day.  

I didn’t have to run from hatred.  I lived in a neighborhood and went to a school where there was not one person of color.  I heard lots and lots of racist comments, mostly from my grandparents.  They were awful.  They made me a bit afraid of people of color, but they didn’t make me hate them.  Maybe I wasn’t far enough up the ladder that hate was an option.  The truth is, even young, I was able to see that we are all people.   It’s not hard to do, if you look at people in the eyes.  It’s even less hard if you take the time to hear their story.

I write this because mercy is one of the few gifts that all of us can give and that all of us need.  I write this because if we can’t stand together on mercy, I fear that we have lost.

I know that the word peace has been politicized.  I learned that 6 years ago while talking to a TN state legislator and they told me that was a “hippie word”.    They suggested that I not use the word “peace” because it’s too liberal and people wouldn’t listen to my conflict management message.  I get it.  I found a new way to say “peace” – the absence of violence.  I think we can all agree that’s a good thing and we all want that, yes?  Yet please, pause a moment and ask why that word is a source of division.  It’s a beautiful word, a worthy goal.   Years later, I have hypothesis, but I really still am baffled.

Now the word is mercy. 

If I were giving a presentation, I’d probably put up a poll right now and ask, “Who here has ever done something so stupid, so wrong that they don’t want someone else to know.?” “Who here has ever hurt someone very, very badly – even if unintentionally?”  “Who here has ever needed mercy – even to give themselves mercy?”  My last question would be, “Who here would say ‘yes’ to all of the above multiple times?”  

Being human is so complicated.  We’re rarely all bad and we’re never all good.  We’re human.  We need mercy.

I think pointing the truth that not all undocumented people are criminals, that many work hard and make our lives easier and that just because people are different than us and believe differently than us doesn’t mean their evil was speaking truth.  I think doing this knowing that we are in a time where we’re either all for something or all against was incredibly brave.  I honestly believe that the higher power that I believe in would have said the same thing.  And I want to weep that someone can’t speak good without being crucified.    Would it be hard to hear if you’ve forgotten that mercy is an option?  Is it hard to hear a truth?  Yes.  Is it how we grow?  Yes.  It is.

We are making history, all of us, every day.  We are writing a story.  I cannot think of one point in history where the strong and mighty pushing out the weaker and those with less ever, ever reflected well for those who were the aggressors.   I cannot think of one time that served the planet as humans.   It caused pain and suffering – on all sides, especially if there is war - and won nothing.  Why can’t we learn that?    I see our place in the world and where we’re moving and this is my thought – When we are not friends with people, we become their enemies.  

Look at every single war.  The governments fight while the people suffer.  None of us can afford to make enemies.  It isn’t soft to try to work things through, it is the legacy we leave for our children and grandchildren.

Today, I thought of my dad and my grandparents, post-World War II.  Things were too tragic for them to speak.  My dad has always fought for the underdog.  I guess I inherited that gene.  I hear him now and I really chuckled out loud, “Why can’t we all just get along?”  In full disclosure, my dad never backed down from a fight, though his fight was standing up for “the little guy.”

Are there a lot of things broken – absolutely.  Is force the way to fix it?  I have to ask, what are the consequences of that force?   I believe we need to think long and hard about that and perhaps together come up with other choices.  Find new ways that hurt people less.  That’s what conflict management is.  It works.

I will close with a couple of things that I hold as truths.

1. Just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I’m against you.  It means I’m different from you.  I’m me.

2. Acting from fear of “what-if” creates monsters and boogeymen and we never make our best decisions when acting out of fear.

3. If I lived in a land where my family risked being killed or didn’t have enough to eat, I hope I’d be brave enough to try to find a place where they could survive, and I hope I could find a place that they would be welcomed.

4. People don’t choose to be born where they were born or the color they are, yet those things make all the difference in the world to their choices in life.

5. There’s enough for everyone.  Enough jobs, enough food, enough space, enough love, enough mercy.

6. Addressing criminals is a whole other conversation that needs to be had too.  It is separate from all of the above.   Not everyone is a criminal.

I have asked my children to watch and learn and decide who they’re going to be.  To try to see the big picture, all the sides.   I’ve asked them to be thoughtful and intentional on how they want to act.  I’ve asked them to choose their actions, even small actions of who they are in every moment, and to not sit by and do nothing.  Because when this story plays out, I suggest they would rather be a participant than an observer, knowing the world we’re making is what we will leave for not only our children, but everyone else’s too.