Justice, or Mercy?

I just finished reading Philippa Gregory's book "A Respectable Trade," and it's given me pause to think more about the structure of this world, of my world, and what has brought us to where we are. In large part it was the slave trade, and then later colonization, and then after that economic hegemony, that allowed the massive accumulation of wealth in what we now call the developed world.

I named this blog "The Long Arc," out of the hope and faith that the world would and could become more just. I have resonated with the bumper stickers that say "If you want peace, work for justice." I like the word Justice. It conjures up images of right triumphing over wrong, of good triumphing over evil. I believe that a more just world is what I want. I see all the unfairness, all the inequity, and I think that life would be better here on earth if things were more just.

But sometimes I see how I benefit, how I've benefited my whole life, from injustice. I haven't liked the possibility that things I buy are made in sweatshops, I haven't liked the fact that my food in all probability has been harvested by people who are little better than slaves, who have little power and few choices. I try to do what I can. But I am part of this system, and I wouldn't know how to extricate myself fully even if I could.

Sometimes now when I think about what you might call the karmic burden of my life as an American consumer, I fear full justice. As the American Empire quavers on what might be its last legs, and I think about how far we could fall and what it all might mean for being able to maintain what I've come to think of as quality of life for my family, for my child, it is hard to not feel fear. What if the chickens we've set loose in the world come home to roost? I think of what we've done to Iraq. What we've helped be done to people in countless nations on this earth to maintain our cheap access to oil and other resources. I think of the thousands of Iraqi women in exile who are working as prostitutes to make the money they need to live. I want life to be better for those people, for all people. But I'm not sure if I really want justice, full justice.

One of my favorite Shakespearean quotes comes from The Merchant of Venice, a play that has come under fire for its anti-Semitic overtones. I've read a lot of Shakespeare, and forgotten most of what I've read, but these lines have always resonated:

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.

I believe that working for justice is a necessity--to always look to see the connections between what I do and how it affects others in this world. I believe that at our core we are an inseparable One, and that my life should reflect that reality. In a body, when all is working well, the cells work together synergistically for the good of the one body.

When I think of this karmic burden I bear, that we bear, I feel bad. But I know that guilt comes cheap, and if I only feel bad, like a penance paid for a wrong, that it does nothing to right the wrong. The only thing that I believe matters in the end is how those feelings of guilt translate into right action. I will work for justice, in the ways I can, but I will hope for mercy.