A classroom revelation

"The quality of mercy is not strained."                     

I don't think I knew, back then, that "strained" is really short for "constrained," or "held back," but I did know--I was maybe 15--that what the line meant was that you simply couldn't do too much mercy. No one could. Way back then, somehow I got that.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. 

Mrs. Goehring taught sophomore English. Mostly, it seems, I was bored. She was the essential schoolmarm, a teacher we might have guessed pushed herself into a desk drawer when the rest of us left the classroom. She was a function of the school, of no greater particular interest say, than, back then, the bell.

It's fair to say I remember Portia's speech not because of the teacher but because of the teaching. Critics claim Shakespeare was retooling Deuteronomy 32:2, but I don't remember knowing that either. There was just something enriching about the idea that in this world the quality of mercy was so abundant, even eternal, that really you couldn't exhaust it, even if you tried.

It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Amazing. When I give it away, I get as blest as the recipient. It's not only sweet, it's a bargain. I understood that. It made beautiful sense. When I see the line today, almost 60 years later, I'm in sophomore English.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His scepter 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 sceptered sway.

It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;

In truth, nothing could have been farther from my mind when I was 15 than English royalty. Hey! we'd fought King George. Brit monarchs were hooligans. 

But I understood I that it behooves (a word I knew from church!) the high-and-mighty to keep mercy somewhere handy, right beside the throne, because kings and queens are actually most blessed by dispensing mercy--which is to say charity, which is to say love, which is to say forgiveness--all of that. That day in class, if only for a moment, I understood that Portia, and Shakespeare, was really talking about King Me and the blessings--and requirements--of faith. I got that.

It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

Showing mercy, simply enough, is God-like.  When it comes to justice, you can't season it enough with mercy. It drops like gentle rain.

My thanks, this morning, are for Portia, and Shakespeare. 

And more. I'm thankful for The Merchant of Venice, thankful Mrs. Goehring assigned it way back when, thankful she took the time to talk about Portia's famous speech, thankful that somehow--despite the walking, talking chaos I was when 15--I myself took a moment to realize that God almighty was all heart in this courtroom drama, that God almighty was not telling me but showing me that cutting out a pound of flesh was not the best to live the life still stretched out farther than I could possibly see before me. That mercy was.

I was just a kid, but that morning I knew that I'd stumbled on infinite worth. God almighty, by way of Portia, by way of Shakespeare, by way of sophomore English, made crystal clear that forgiveness is an essential human quality--and that it's never really exhausted. 

Mrs. Goehring couldn't knew nothing of that. But that day in sophomore English, I really learned something; and that's why today I'm thankful for the long-ago morning when I read those blessed lines, a morning no one remembers but me in a classroom revelation I've never forgotten. 

I understood a line at a time I was only beginning to understand a life.