Being the Rope of Mercy

Available for over a year

Good morning. I was visiting my mother, and after 9 hours of travel, I arrived late in the evening, ate some food and crashed into bed, the feeling of a temperature rising in my body. When I woke up the combination of jetlag and fever left me discombobulated. I thought I had woken up in my own bed at home, but the surroundings were alien. From the other room, I heard my mother’s footsteps, the unmistakable pattern of her movements. I remembered a moment pre-dawn when she covered me in an extra blanket. I was home, because I was where she was. Proust says that memory comes like a rope let down from heaven to draw one out of the abyss of unbeing, but what happens if you have no memory? The curious case of Clive Waring who suffered one of the worst cases of amnesia ever, records him as not being able to recall short nor long-term memory. As soon as something happened, he immediately forgot. And yet, despite this, he would remember his wife, Deborah. He didn’t recall the details, but he knew he loved her, and she loved him, and that was the rope let down from heaven for him to hold onto. How often have we forgotten the exact words a person may have said to us, or the precise actions that they did, but we remember always how they made us feel? In the Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad is told, “By the Mercy of Allah, you were gentle with them. Had you been rude or harsh, they would have scattered from around you.” Elsewhere, God reminds him, “We did not send you, except as a Mercy to the world.” I pray we move through the world leaving in our wake people, whether familiar or strangers, feeling loved, seen, and cherished. Ameen.