Gentle Rain

What do I think about on a sunny and cold afternoon.

All sorts of things.

Today I’ve been on a mental exploration focused on health care.

I wrote an earlier post about that today.

While I was thinking about health issues, I developed an öhrwurm “earworm”. A song that played internally, a song I loved, a song I could not identify at first. So I moved on from thinking about health issues to wondering about this song, and why it was haunting me. It took me a while to sort out the what and why. When I found the song, it took me on an inner journey.

I have been listening to the song “Mercy Now”. After reaching directly into my heart, it became an earworm for me. I first heard it in a series we have been watching, “Case Histories”, based on Kate Atkinson’s novels. I love the series, and deeply relate to the protagonist, a love and compassion motivated character. The series, and the song, open my heart, make me feel less isolated and alone with my experiences, with what I know, and with what love means.

I watched an interview with the woman who wrote the song, “Mercy Now”, Mary Gauthier, and almost instantly fell in love with her. I hope she lives to be a hundred years old, and writes and sings until she passes into heaven. The interview host was Sarah Silverman.

Funny old world, what people think of as depressing. Sarah Silverman said Mary Gauthier’s songs “make you want to kill yourself”. Nothing in my life, no matter how horrific or sad, has ever made me want to kill myself. I do not understand this kind of personal fragility, although I have deeply loved people who experience/experienced it. To me this stems from a lack of balance, an avoidance of painful and inconvenient realities, a mourning at the loss of innocence.

Cheerfulness that glosses over the rough spots of life is depressing to me, rhetoric that obscures reality with magic bullets and rainbows without clouds is depressing to me, smiles and egos that smirk with self-satisfaction and superiority are depressing to me, manic egos seeking solace in money, fame, or power are depressing to me… so much of what I see in the world around me, is depressing to me. But the words of Mary Gauthier, and of the soldiers with whom she has collaborated in song, are beautiful and uplifting, respectful and compassionate, full of reality, dignity, and hope. She connects us to what it is to be fully human, accepting herself as a step, as we all can be in our own way, in an actual stairway to heaven.

I am thankful for people such as Kate Atkinson, and Mary Gauthier, and for all the other humans who are bright stars in my night sky.

Interview: Sarah Silverman with Mary Gauthier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7g3ehC-O0

Song: “Mercy Now”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7g3ehC-O0

Series: Case Histories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Histories_(TV_series)

Books: Kate Atkinson
https://www.kateatkinson.co.uk/books/

Worldly

Weather

-9°C
Date: 1:00 PM EST Monday 17 February 2025
Condition: Mainly Sunny
Pressure: 101.0 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: -8.7°C
Dew point: -16.5°C
Humidity: 53%
Wind: WSW 35 gusts 56 km/h
Wind Chill: -18
Visibility: 24 km

Quote

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
William Shakespeare
1564 – 1616