mercy

Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

At the moment, 1 Peter 2:10 is not only among my favorite verses in the Bible, it's up there with "The Snow Man" and "Law Like Love" for my favorite things people have done with words, period. If Christianity appeals to me because its claims about my limitations resonate so loudly, it saves itself from becoming just another exercise in self-deprication by virtue of the things it frees me from caring about:

Once I could not abide in a body that weighed more than one hundred ten pounds; now I have received mercy.

Once, getting an A- meant I was stupid and worthless; now, I have received mercy.

Once, I compulsively disparaged people whose ideas and opinions felt threatening to me; now, I have received mercy.

Once, I  prolonged every conflict I encountered until I found a way to "win"; now, I have received mercy. 

Once, my desire to help those around me was inevitably subjugated to my need to be central in their lives; now, I have received mercy. 

Once, I was so adept with my tongue-claws that I cut people down without a first thought, let alone a second. Now? Mercy! 

The religious tradition in which I grew up wasn't liturgical. Church was dominated by fifty-minute sermons, the content of which depended on the individual pastor, and prayers were composed in real time, as the Spirit moved. As a result, I have limited experience with the ways in which ritual and repetition construct meaning, infuse meaning, seep into one's person so that faith becomes a matter of identity, of who one is, rather than of affiliation, who one claims to to be. 

And as a result of that, until recently, I hadn't really experienced grace itself, grace for its own sake: not the promise that I've been rescued from a somewhat implausible, supernatural future, but the reality that once I was this way, and now, at this moment, I am this other way, if I care to remember. 

Once, I was defined by my weight and my grades and my resume and the corrosive insecurity that still flares up like a virus from time to time. Now, I am defined by my humanity, by my relationship to God, to the universe He made and the other creatures with whom He filled it. And evaluating my own worth has been taking off the list of unpleasant tasks I am compelled to do -- along with attempting to control the size of my ass or getting other people to like me. That, to me, is a mercy more potent than I could have imagined before I experienced it.