As we prepare to move, we are confronting issues with Fiona. She will have a much smaller room in a much smaller house, and we need to get rid of some of her toys. This shouldn’t be a big issue. There are many toys that she is too big for and hasn’t touched for years, but they still have an emotional attachment and we need to be gentle about how we remove them.

One toy, we weren’t gentle enough about in our plans for getting rid of it, and she had a melt down. We talked it through with her can came up with plans that she was happy with, and she quickly recovered from her meltdown.

I am on a mailing list with a person whose mother just died. The list is made up of psychologists and the discussions can get pretty intense at times. One person spoke about a friend who lost her daughter to cancer eleven years ago. She described her friend as struggling with rage and aching grief for years. Her friend used this grief to work for positive social change. The writer reported that it was only this year that her friend “recovered her full capacity for joy”.

What a remarkable phrase. Fiona, at age five, has not experienced the level of grief that many of us have. The grief she experiences and feels deeply are about the loss of a toy, and she bounces back in a matter of minutes. She quickly recovers her full capacity for joy.

As we get older, we build up one emotional scar after another. Our ability to recover our full capacity for joy weakens, and some of us don’t manage experience joy in its fullest.

Kim and I had only been dating for six weeks when her mother died. Over the first few years of our marriage, we attended many funerals together. Kim’s mother’s mother died within the year from a broken heart. Kim’s mother’s father died a slow agonizing death from Alzheimer’s.

When Kim was little, she used to go over to her grandparents house almost daily. It is important to her that Fiona be able to get to her grandparents house frequently, and the house we are moving to is about two blocks from Kim’s grandparents and a short drive from Fiona’s grandparents.

This is a very different orientation than I grew up with. My father’s father died 64 years ago, yesterday; years before I was born. His mother died eight years later, so I never got a chance to meet either of my paternal grandparents. My mother was the youngest in her family, and her parents were quite old by the time I came along. We would see them a couple times a year. My early memories of my grandfather are restricted to him watching Red Sox games on a small old black and white TV and sneaking us kids sourballs when our parents weren’t looking. I never really experienced the joy that Fiona finds with her “papa”.

So, as we build up the collection of emotional scars that life gives us, I wonder, how do we go about recovering our full capacity for joy. I’m sure that my therapist friends would talk about the importance of therapy. I’m sure that priest friends would talk about God’s role.

Mary Gauthier’s song, “Mercy Now” captures some of this. She writes about her father dying of Alzheimer’s,

My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor
Fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over
It won't be long and he won't be around
I love my father, and he could use some mercy now

In these days after September 11th, in these days of war in Iraq, in these days of financial uncertainty, we could all use a little mercy now, we could all use a little help in recovering our full capacity for joy.

Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race
Towards another mushroom cloud
People in power, well
They'll do anything to keep their crown
I love life, and life itself could use some mercy now