This quote may seem a little disorienting, because it requires us to imagine a character so clement that they suffer from a surfeit of empathy and its corollary in the external world: mercy.
For anyone who lives in the real world - and I try to avoid it as such as possible - this can be an implausible idea.
There is no shortage of judgment and severity, the special kind of ugliness that comes from being centred wholly on yourself, cutting your heart off from other people and forgetting the quality of mercy.
One of the strengths of fiction is that there is no impediment to imagining such a character, or indeed any character: in this case the gentle and kind-hearted lawyer (!!) that I named Jesse James.
The quoted passage comes from his terrible moment of truth, when he must rise to the fight of his life. Confronting an infinitely brutal and treacherous Thing that fell from the void places, seeking dominion over the world.
At one point in the battle the Beast weeps out of its many eyes, seeking to mobilise Jesse's pity in an attempt to overcome him.
Jesse finds himself tempted towards mercy, but he finds Ruby's fierceness within him "completely blocking that way".
He rejoices to repudiate the creature in the same spirit. This Beast who deserves no respect and no honesty, so that bringing these qualities to the fight "would be stupidity and not honour."
You can read the chapter (free!) to see the formidable power regained by a man cut free from a life-long excess of mercy.
This balancing of characters' respective strenths is an ongoing theme in my fiction.
To see one example you can read this earlier blog post about The Word and The Power.
Towards the end of the Chronicles of Lupa this balancing is made quite explicit. Ruby is shown with with absolute clarity how Jesse triumphed against the monster, and especially how:
"... he had battled not only with his own gifts but also the gifts that she had bestowed on him. Ruby swelled out softly to think how much Jesse had been changed by her, how the justice he had executed in that victory owed more to her justice than his own."
The corresponding process occurs within Ruby at the same time, flowing out of her love for this man "who had by his love changed her soul completely". This leaves Ruby:
"....now susceptible to Jesse’s softer sense of justice, some of the moderation and clemency that had instructed him for his entire life. Putting a stay on her own innate severity, the vengeance she had brought into the world and never thought to temper."
This may be one measure of a true love, this special receptivity that allows each lover to benefit from and incorporate the strengths of the other, transforming both of them into something altogether more beautiful and rare.
So that Ruby shines just as Jesse shines, augmenting his strength and ameliorating her severity, this gentle process of:
"... the balancing up of their respective strengths, bringing them towards a resweetened concept of what right judgment might be, the powers each of them might wield now they were recovered to one other."
This is rendered metaphorically in the image of The Vine and the Branches (along with the roots and the bloom) and by the more common image of the two becoming as one, as Jesse sees after their final night of love:
"... he knew there was nothing more for either of them to hide, and no hope for either of them should fate or death seek to separate them again. For they were now of One Body, and they were of One Blood, and to part them would be to cleave a single thing into separate and unsupportable parts."
This balancing is important for good narrative structure, and it is crucial for us if we are to live worthwhile, enriched lives.
But as I noted at the beginning of the post, there is in the world (as there has always been) a desperate shortage of mercy, for clemency in our judgment of one another and greater kindness in our actions.
Because if we do not turn our hearts towards love, if we continue down this path of greater hatred and rancour and accusation, we may soon see what hell realms really look like, out of lives lived entirely without the distortions of mercy.
P. Julian
2 September 2018
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"Jesse looked further at the things Ruby had taught him, and amongst those gifts he found her shining mirror of justice, reflecting all things truly without the distortions of mercy. Jesse held this mirror up and the Beast saw itself for what it was, bloating and twisting like an image in a fairground mirror, a gorgon shattered by disgust at itself, appalled to witness the true nature of its being."
From the Chronicles of Lupa - Volume 2 Chapter 15 - The Fisher King