Anne Lamott once wrote that an open, merciful heart is an invitation to pain, shame, mockery, and failure.

At one time, Jesus was the world’s hero and promoter of mercy, calling on us to love our neighbors, period. In Kabbalah, mercy (Rachamim) is seen as the ultimate, harmonizing force of the universe, the bridge between divine justice and unconditional kindness.

The Koran embraces mercy as a fundamental duty, a defining characteristic of God, and a central guide to human behavior.

All three of the great faiths were born to advance mercy throughout the world.

They are rising again.

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Kim, above is my symbol and inspiration for mercy. She greets people in need when they come to the Pantry. She welcomes them in their cars, signs them in with warmth and kindness, ensures older people know where the bathroom is and have access to it, and makes them feel welcome and dignified. She has a deep gift of mercy.

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Jesus said to the women in the well, Be like me: be true to who you really are: be in truth, share, and above all, be true to forgive.”

Does this go for Presidents who are tearing our country apart? It’s a question that every one of us will confront in the coming months and years.

I think of Donald Trump often when I think of mercy, and as he desperately hides from the real powers in the world,  in part because I hope to be empathic to an old and sick man, and in part because he has led and fostered a moment that has made mercy as a certain political policy and a movement that uses the term “woke” as a damning of mercy and a literal cultural war against.

I know what it’s like to be rushing to the end of life; I know denial is not the answer.

I have written several times about my writing about my curious empathy for Donald Trump, as I see him as a dangerous and cruel leader.

Still, as a man aging rapidly and falling to pieces in the denial of his very obvious disintegration, mentally and physically, the poor man is echoing the predecessor he makes a living out of hating and ridiculing for the very same reasons.

I know it’s not what most “woke” people like me want to hear.

His pain is our pain, his suffering is ours. More and more, there is less and less difference between him and us, because we can’t get him out of our heads, and bit by bit, many of us are learning to hate just as much as he does.

I don’t wish to go there; I’ve worked too hard on my spiritual life to hate because I am hated and hate to see innocent people suffer. But just because he does it, I don’t have the right to do it. Quite the opposite, he has inspired me to explore and rediscover the shy world of good, and the discarded culture of mercy.

I call it the world of mercy, not hate. It’s my world. It feels like a surrender to me.

Mercy is the divine and the human, the messy, transformative, heartbreaking ghost we can’t follow and can’t get rid of either. It’s the great moral dilemma of our time. We are hated for showing mercy to others and then hated again for not showing it to people we dislike.

Without mercy, I wonder, how can we ever come together as a people again? This is why I like young James Talarico in Texas. He fights, disagrees, and argues, but he doesn’t seem to know how to hate. There is hope in him.

It’s clear to any trained psychologist why the President hates Biden so much. He, like him, is in the grip of nature; no lies or manipulation or vote is yet known to stop it. I’m sorry, but I feel sorry for that part of him. I have to look in the mirror every day, also, and I don’t dye my hair or have much.

Every time I write this, people say, “But he is doing great harm and ought to be hated and punished for that.” Is that really how mercy works?

Although I know Donald Trump would brand me as just another of the “woke,” and he would be right to do it, his real rage comes from elsewhere, including nature, which he can harm but can’t frighten or frighten away.

I mean, let’s face it, why would Trump need to hate the other weak sissies who persist in pushing the idea of mercy and me? Strong men rarely talk about mercy; they race cars and wrestle one another and make fun of the weak and blame the poor.

The wise can see, I think, that his hatred and fear and obsession with domination is a tragedy for him and the ones he hurts; it is himself he hates, not me or people like me.

The religious founders said we are constructed to know right from wrong, in one way or another, in one place or another.

We were once taught to know the difference.

Mr. Trump and his followers would probably hate me if asked, and given the chance. But my problem is that I don’t want to hate them, and I don’t. I’m not sure what that makes me, except out of line with the Red and the Blue, two colors that I will never permit to identify me; I insist on doing my own thinking.

I plead all the time for us to bring compassion and mercy back to our lives and our government. I’m not sure how hating Donald Trump would support that idea. My idea is that I have to do it, not just blabber about it. I don’t want to be another e-mail begging for money to fight the bogeymen.

I’d rather raise support for a Food Pantry in need, every one of the volunteers who work there knows mercy, has needed it, or shows it. If I don’t wish to be hated, I don’t need to hate.

I’m in this odd position. I’m hungry for mercy and praying for it. And I believe the world around me is starving for it as well. Our leaders have failed us in this.

So this is the moral drama for good and merciful people. How to give voice to the beauty inside of us, not just the anger.

I keep thinking that it’s about to change. Mercy lovers all over the country are running for public, local, and federal office and speaking out. I hear them and feel them.

Mercy is contagious.

That’s how I caught it.