The Mockingbird magazine is excited to announce that Issue 23: Mercy is now available to pre-order, with delivery in mid August. If  “love and mercy is what you need right now,” let this issue-themed playlist tide you over while you wait for your copy.

 

Mercy seems soft in a hard world — that is, until you need it. When just deserts are yours to be served, the taste of mercy is unbelievably good, like the taste of freedom, relief, a fresh start. But if you haven’t experienced it for yourself, the whole thing can seem a little airy, an idealistic concept whose meaning proves elusive. What is this thing we call mercy? In the words of journalist Elizabeth Bruenig, “Mercy is when you have the right to exact some sort of penalty or punishment …  and you elect to do less than you could or nothing at all.” 

It was only after we had begun working on this issue that we realized the real trouble with it: how offensive mercy can appear to those on the outside; how, when it seems least appropriate, it may be most urgently needed. In such instances it can seem dangerous. To let an offender ‘off the hook’ could mean giving them the freedom to once again do the very thing they’re being pardoned for. But as these pages prove, very often mercy has the opposite effect. It inspires gratitude, awe, a deeper faith in love; it inspires security and freedom to be creative. As the musician Nick Cave once wrote, “Mercy ultimately acknowledges that we are all imperfect and in doing so allows us the oxygen to breathe — to feel protected within a society, through our mutual fallibility.” In her book Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, Anne Lamott suggests that the musculature of mercy is what holds up the skeleton of our humanity: “Mercy is radical kindness. Mercy means offering or being offered aid in desperate straits. Mercy is not deserved. It involves absolving the unabsolvable, forgiving the unforgivable.”

Of course, we are most likely to extend mercy to others once we have been recipients of it ourselves. This is one of the great grounding principles of the Christian faith: that God is “gracious and merciful,” or, as the classic hymn by Frederick William Faber professes, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea.” In a moving photograph by Jessica Hines featured in this issue, a hand-painted road sign puts it directly: “GOD IS NOT MAD AT YOU NO MATTER WHAT!” 

In this issue, we push that claim and find it has no limits, bringing you stories of mercy, both vertical and horizontal, major and mundane. The scholar Kendall Cox offers a close read of the Prodigal Son parable, and author Francis Spufford makes the case that the existence of everything is mercy. Dianne Collard writes of how, after a radical act of forgiveness, she worked to have her son’s killer released from prison. Katelyn Beaty writes about mercy in the internet age, especially for oneself, while Kelsey Marden sheds light on the faith motivating workers from the International Rescue Committee. Other essays teach us about the quality of mercy from Shakespeare, Moby Dick, and of course, Mr. Miyagi. We have some percipient interviews, too: with New York Times contributor Esau McCaulley; author Alex Mar, about her book Seventy Times Seven; and Robert Leon Davis, who was a cop turned fugitive of the law for more than twenty years before a powerful conversion brought him home. We hope that somewhere in these pages you feel that feeling of being off the hook. That you enjoy your just deserts, because they are sweet. 

— The Editors

Pre-Order Here!

 

Table of Contents

ESSAYS

Through Him All Things Were Made | Francis Spufford

When the Words Become True | Dianne B. Collard

Prodigal Grace | Kendall Cox

Mercy Begets Mercy | Katelyn Beaty

An Appalachian Commedia | Bill Borror

The Basis of God’s Mercy | Orrey McFarland

Look for the Helpers | Kelsey Marden

A Song of Ascents | Joshua Mackin

Mercy Is for the Weak | Mischa Willett

A Terrible Mercy Is Born | Jeremiah Webster

Unbidden, Unearned, Uninitiated | Elizabeth Clemmer Knowlton

INTERVIEWS

A Moral Decision That Does Not Make Life Easier | Interview with Alex Mar

The Fugitive Comes Home | Interview with Robert Leon Davis

On Finding Beauty in the Struggle | Esau McCaulley

POETRY

Four Poems | Brian Volck

“Stay This Moment”|  John Casteen

Two Poems | Marci Rae Johnson

 LISTS & COLUMNS

Dear Gracie| Sarah Condon

Thy Tender Mercies’ Sake | A Collection of Petitions & Prayers

The Confessional

Mercy at the Movies | Meaghan Ritchey

When Mercy Seasons Justice | Benjamin Self

SERMON

The Urgency of Mercy | David Zahl

The Playlist

Featured image: Hillerbrand-Magsamen,#50: A Device to Forgive Yourself for All the People You’ve Wronged, 2018. ArchivalPigment Print, 16 × 16 in. ©Hillerbrand+Magsamen.

Cover art: Ernesto Rancaño, El perdón / Forgiveness, 2017. Methacrylate, metal and feathers, 16 1/2 × 7 9/10 × 19 7/10 in.

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