Mercy Among the Children

David Adams Richards

Scone smiled, with a degree of naive self-infatuation seen only in those with an academic education, shook his head at the silliness of academia, while knowing that his tenure was secure and every thought he had ever had was manifested as safe by someone else before him. My father never had such a luxury. There was a time my father would have been beaten by his own father if it was known that he read. Knowing this, tell me the courage of Dr. David Scone.

What my father believed from the time his own father died was this: whatever pact you made with God, God will honour,. You may not think He does, but then do you really know the pact you have actually made? Understand the pact you have made, and you will understand how God honours it.

I will say this once, and not to demean all the good they have tried to do for you. But I have found out, even before the death of my father, that no one can do an injury to you without doing an injury to themselves. The wind and rain battered the eaves of the shoe-box shaped house, as if to mock him.

You see, she never in her life thought it necessary to laugh at me, Autumn said.

Because Sydney was trusted, some men asked him to arbitrate on their behalf. Devlin coming to him was not unusual. They relied on him, and they teased him. All mocking is a form of fear. Those who are most mocked are generally most feared. My father was mocked all his life.

Son, a priest is not the Church, and the Church is not the faith, Father answered.

Sydney, listen to me, my mother said that night. I want you to listen to me. You are allowed anything in this life--except the luxury of being different--this is why you are being tried. This is perhaps the only reason. Don't think professors get away with being different, because they do not---they conform--is that the word? Yes, conform. Not one has come out to defend you. They have all hidden. When Miss Young knew the book was to be used against you last week--and you said it was a great book--she went to the university and not one English professor came forward to claim its greatness . They didn't want to be associated with you even though she said she saw it on at least three professors' shelves. You are not human to them; they don't want you to read what they do or come to the same conclusions they come to. So I now know what their learning is worth.

I shrugged as if to say it made no difference. Then I went home. Once I was alone, my elation subsided, and I was left only with a picture of Hanny's kind dark face looking at me in confusion and in shame because I had hit him in front of his wife.

She is the best lawyer I know and the kindest person to ever deal with us--because that's all any of us want, Ms. Whyne--not revolution or doctrine but only kindness. I felt smug saying this, but I did not take it back.

All of a sudden falsehood just goes away.

What should I get from books? Alcide asked in French. That you are not alone--even along this broken tractor road. You need to know nothing else, my father answered in French.

Of course, Father's innocence afforded him nothing.

Nobody can do harm to you without doing more harm to themselves. Is this vile lie or shining truth? We are a world that claims to have values and ideals and simultaneously a world that looks askance at those ideals, noting with cold eye that they don't do much good for those who live them. As many words as we use and know, I still comes first, sometimes family, but mostly I. When it comes down it, we only believe sin is as bad as the suffering we see. When the sinners triumph, enjoy their riches, and walk with gleaming shoes, we condemn but also connive a way to follow in their shining footsteps.

Often in my calmness or naivete or simplicity, I feel that I am not as real as all the angry people bent on destroying themselves and others. In a way, I think that is what Mercy Among Children is about. That we the great mass of people are not real unless we somehow are evil. Our sin is what distinguishes us, our evil is uniquely are own, it's the darkness that gives our faces definition. Though knowledge may come with evil. This does not necessarily mean that knowledge is what provides reality. Indeed, the ignorant are often more sincere, more real, than those considered knowledgeable.

Some even arrive at the folly of feeling they need forgiveness for their peace, enjoyment, and joy. For those who do not suffer wonder what they've done wrong.

Is a man who believes that evil doers do more harm to themselves than to the people they harm a man I should take seriously? And if his reaction is one of abject and complete pacifism, should I take that as a potentially commendable path? On the one hadn he suffers many evils but embodies Saul Bellow's man who ends the pain chain of X hit Y hit Z. On the other hand, this man brings such pain on his family and wife that it is questionable whether or not he actually does them harm himself. In this fallen world, how are we to be Holy? For the system no longer supports that version, and the holy tend to find themselves dumped. Too often it seems innocence affords us nothing.

This book will make your muscles spasm in anger, but if you take the time to feel around your anger a little you'll quickly begin to wonder just what you're angry at...