Trocaire

The Irish word for Mercy

In an other life I will be a shepherd.
I almost was in this one.
First I learned to knit.
Then I studied weaving… and built a loom.
Then a most patient woman taught me to spin…and I assembled a wheel.
Someone gave me a book…and I grew plants to dye the yarn.
Then I moved to the country…and visited a sheep farm.
Where I walked through a pasture…full of gently grazing sheep.
Which struck a chord…whose strings resonated deeply in my soul,
followed a direct path from my heart,  down through my hands…
and landed, at least for this lifetime, squarely into my brushes.

Much later, I came to stand among a flock of black faced sheep…in Ireland.
A land where the wind and the wool are redolent of peat…
and the humans wear their welcome on fisherman knitted sleeves.
Where I came to understand a new kind of Mercy.

Back across that wild Atlantic way,
on her sister island, is this pasture and her sheep.
They are my familiars, as surely as the weathered cedar and the blindingly honest light.

After visiting the studio and seeing this painting,
our friend Ellen shared an Aramaic explanation of Mercy as…a fierce bonding love.

In this life, and every other,
may that quality of Mercy …rise up to meet us
and may we look up from our pastures
and trust enough to lead it home.