Mercy Now: Mary Gauthier’s Election Wednesday Wisdom

“My church and my country could use a little mercy now.
As they sink into a poisoned pit.
That’s going to take forever to climb out.
They carry the weight of the faithful.
Who follow ‘em down.
I love my church and country and they could use some mercy now”

The folk singer Mary Gauthier wrote those words twenty years ago for the song “Mercy Now,” which appeared on the album of the same name. Like all great art, it seems as if Gauthier had a time telescope fixed squarely on this point in the future and knew every detail about the moment we are living in.

She knew we would need a lament. She knew what that lament should be.

When it comes to acuity with words and a prophetic understanding of the human condition, I am no Mary Gauthier. I am, however, writing these words in the past for an audience in the future – three days in the future, to be exact.

From my old, worn recliner early Sunday morning, I am thinking about Wednesday morning, when these words will appear online. Of course, the elephant in the room is Tuesday.

If conventional wisdom holds steady, you don’t likely know the outcome of the presidential election election. But you might. Who knows? 

But you don’t have to be a deep well of wisdom like Mary Gauthier to know that, whatever the outcome and regardless of what we may or may not know, our church and our country could use a little mercy now.

We do know that many of us in this country can’t fathom why many others did what we did on Tuesday (or the days leading up to it). We look at each other with distrust, disdain even. The well of goodwill has been poisoned. We can’t live without its water, but if we drink it, we die.

What will we do?

There are plenty of people pointing the way to healing for our life together. Across the country, public deliberation efforts are trying to teach us how to talk with, not past, each other. They are showing us how to name and numerate our values while discussing heated topics, and how to see our conversation partners as people with inherent worth and dignity.

Policy options such as ranked choice voting and overturning Citizens United could disarm the powers that benefit from our vitriol and division.

And, of course, there is the wisdom of Jesus that teaches us that our own lives and the lives of our communities can never be whole until the lives of our enemies are whole.

There are many things for us to do and we must get about doing them quickly. This is true whether we know what we want to know on Wednesday or not. But before that, we must stop, breathe, name and lament the history that has brought us to this fraught moment here “between hell and hallowed ground,” as Gauthier sings.

With God’s grace, that lament will lead to mercy and then maybe, just maybe, the mercy will bring healing.