To Tip The Scales of Justice and Mercy

The Small Person is in bed, again, at last, and I'm reading, again, but not books, because books can't hold my attention right now when I'm restless, and tired, and vaguely guilty for the fact that my house looks like it's lived-in and there are toys in the corner and folding on the lounge and unfinished paperwork on the table and dishes in the kitchen, though all the non-dishwasher dishes are clean and really I just need to unstack and stack. There's a basket of wet laundry waiting to be hung out on the line like flags, colourful flags that symbolise everything we are and have been, because we wear our clothes every day and they make us, and we make them, the caterpillar suit that belongs to Small Person that is my favourite, the shirt I should have thrown out months ago but that I love, the sheets that my husband and I bought together, lie in together, change together.

All of this is calling to me, but I'm sitting here reading, and my soul is full. I'm reading about courage, and hope, and change; I'm reading about things that outrage me, things that try to excuse themselves saying they 'didn't mean' to be offensive, and so therefore aren't - to which I silently, furiously, blood-boilingly disagree, because when you are the powerful one, you don't get to define what offends those in less powerful positions. And I'm reading about love, and life, and wanting to uproot everything you are and have and just get out, change, do something different because what you're living is so empty, so small, so nothing.

I, too, was raised under the unconscious message that bigger is better, that more is more, and I'm not talking about the world, about acts of greed and selfishness and plastered billboards and enchanting lights and beautiful people with beautiful drinks and cars that change your life and computers that sing and dance and long slim legs and long thick hair and sparkling eyes and full breasts in bikinis and clear skin and stuff and things and more-more-more. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about other things, unselfish things, things that help and heal and minister. Things that change the world, that can only BE big because what can small do against a world of greed, a world of pain and hurt and envy and pride, large gaps getting larger and privilege and wealth and so much poverty that I never, ever see. I'm sheltered, spoiled, I don't even KNOW anyone who qualifies as poor, and we're not rich and we have bills but we also have a car, and a motorbike, and a house and new furniture, a dishwasher for Mothers' Day and fishing rods for Christmas, thousands of dollars of books and a flat-screen TV, and how dare we think that we need stuff in a world where people die so easily at the end of a gun wielded in a bar brawl, in front of their wife, with two small children at home?

And I'm doing nothing, or so it seems, because we're told that the only things that count are BIG, that if you're not serving overseas it doesn't matter, that soup kitchens and street alleys are the only places you can make a difference, that unless you're fighting to stay alive with everything you have your perspective isn't valid, doesn't count.

And I'm thinking all this because of what I'm reading, because the woman whose blog I'm reading has felt all this and I do too, and it's guilt, and it's more guilt, and I am so. sick. of guilt. Guilt is poison, a spider bite in the vegetable garden, a snake curled in the blankets of your bed, a fire-ant sting at a lavish summer picnic, ready to flood your senses without provocation, devouring, destroying, souring the taste of the cherries because cherries are expensive, and out of season, and you shouldn't be eating them because the cost to ship them here from America ought to be prohibitive, and people in the world are dying from lack of sustenance and you're eating things that cost a year's worth of food for these people, and you're enjoying it, and you must be perverse.

Sometimes, even big things aren't enough.

But I'm reading, reading, feeling and still reading, and a sentence makes me pause. In all of this, the quiet reminder that even if we don't feel like they do, the small things count, because we're not in this world to fix it, it's broken, it's crumbled, and one day maybe we will rebuild but for now there are just as many working against as there are working for and really, ultimately, there's nothing we can do. One day it will all be gone and we'll start over with everyone, everyone, who wants to see that, regardless of race colour creed size shape gender age. We will all be there, and then it will be fixed.

But now, here, we're not fixing things, no one can do that, we just can't, we're fighting against powers and principalities not of this world, and here, on Earth, it's a losing battle, though ultimately it's won. But I'm reading, and I know: that doesn't mean that what we do doesn't count. It's like the starfish, which has been retold so often it's cliche, but it matters, it still matters even if you've heard the story a thousand times, just like what we do. We do it so often, all that small stuff, that it becomes cliche, and we're inured to it, and we forget that it still matters, that even though we've never seen a smile of ours make a difference, that doesn't mean it doesn't. That giving a few dollars here and there still helps, even if it's boring, even if it's tiny, even if it's 'done'.

And I'm reading, and I find the thing I didn't realise I was looking for, the sentence that gives me hope. We're not here to fix things, we can't, it's too much. Instead, all we need to do it tip the scales. We're striving for justice, for mercy, at least I am, it's what I burn to do with everything that I am, every time I read something that makes my blood boil it's because I hate, I hate injustice and I hate unfairness and I hate that there are people in this world that think that privilege is okay, that power over others is God-given, that discrimination is alright. I long for justice; I ache for mercy. And in the end, that is what we are to do, all we are to do, everything we are to do: to tip the scales in their favour.

And I read this, and I remember: it only takes a grain of rice to tip the scales in the end. We don't need 'big', or loud, or bright or shiny or dazzley; we just need. Everything tips the balance, one way or the other.