Daily Dose (September 8 – 11)

September 7, 2026
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TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 8 —

This week, we are embracing and being embraced by, the gift of Mercy and Grace.
We told the story from Luke’s Gospel, about a “bent woman.” We don’t know her name. Just the label that has been given to her. A label she has carried for 18 years. A woman “imprisoned” by her name. And Luke writes simply, “When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.’”
In other words…
I can see you.
You matter to me.
I love you for who you are.

Last Saturday, we celebrated the Feast Day of St. Teresa of Calcutta. And it did my heart good to read the words Pope Francis spoke during his homily, at the canonization Mass for Mother Teresa, on September 4, 2016.
“Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded. She was committed to defending life, ceaselessly proclaiming that ‘the unborn are the weakest, the smallest, the most vulnerable’. She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity; she made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime – the crimes! – of poverty they created. For Mother Teresa, mercy was the ‘salt’ which gave flavor to her work, it was the ‘light’ which shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering… Mother Teresa loved to say, ‘Perhaps I don’t speak their language, but I can smile’. Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer. In this way, we will open up opportunities of joy and hope for our many brothers and sisters who are discouraged and who stand in need of understanding and tenderness.”
(Thank you Pope Francis)

I do hope you found moments to savor, moments of rest on Labor Day. Moments to “be gentle with yourself”.
I set my “list” aside (well, I had misplaced it, but didn’t give myself grief for not trying to find it). And I was grateful for rest and replenishment—moments of Grace indeed. And yes, I did spend a wee bit of time in the garden.

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 9 —

In the Autumn of 2024, I walked the Camino de Santiago (Porto to Santiago). It changed my world, and my life.
I am so grateful for the gifts and lessons—of Mercy and Grace—from the Camino. (And yes, that includes the freedom at the Camino’s end, to set down my hefty backpack for a wee spell.)
But I do still, heartily, carry memories, visuals, and aha moments with me, throughout each day.
And the best gift, the most healing gift of the pilgrimage for me was (is) the permission to be at home, in this skin. Not the together Terry, or the Terry who has arrived. To be at home with the Terry who can be seeking and discovering. Yes, accepting and embracing, this Terry.
Accepting, even at my core, this broken Terry.
Because it is in that embrace that I hear—and absorb—the liberating expansion of grace.

In a book I am reading, I smiled at this sentence, “she was reclaiming herself, alive in her own skin.” Yes, that’s it. Unabashed in a skin (a self) that feels, values, honors, esteems, loves, fears, desires, hopes for, believes in, and commits to. With nothing to earn or prove, because life isn’t a race or a contest or a beauty pageant.
And please know this: it is from this self—the broken or wounded self—that compassion and kindness and tenderness and empathy and healing and reconciliation can flow to the world around us.
We spill light from those places in our life.

I am often reminded of moments on the Camino, but the memories all congregated today, as I was listening to music from Over the Rhine. And their song, “All my favorite people are broken”.
Music is life-giving to me. Meaning an invitation to let tears flow, and to be embraced in the arms of Grace.
Enjoy a bit of the lyrics from the Over the Rhine’s “All my favorite people are broken.”
“All my favorite people are broken
Believe me, my heart should know
Some prayers are better left unspoken
I just want to hold you and let the rest go
All my friends are part saint and part sinner
We lean on each other, try to rise above
We are not afraid to admit we are all still beginners
We are all late bloomers when it comes to love”

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 10 — We went to the outskirts of Bourke (Mother Teresa writes), where all the Aborigines were living in those little, small shacks made of tin, and old cardboard. I entered one of those little rooms and told the man living there, “Please allow me to make your bed, wash your clothes, to clean your room.”
He kept saying, “I’m alright, I’m alright.”
“But you will be more alright if you allow me to do it.”
Then he allowed me, and at the end, he pulled from his pocket a little old photograph of his father. I said, “You are so like your father.”
He was overjoyed. I blessed the photo, gave it to him, and it went back into the pocket near his heart.
After I cleaned the room I found in the corner a big lamp, full of dirt. I said, “Don’t you light this lamp, such a beautiful lamp?”
He replied, “For whom? Months and months nobody has ever come to me. For whom will I light it?”
So I said, “Won’t you light it, if the Sisters come to you?”
And he said, “Yes.”
So the Sisters started going to visit him for only about 5 to 10 minutes a day. They started lighting that lamp. After some time, the man got into the habit of lighting the lamp himself. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the Sisters stopped going to his shack (although they used to go every morning). I forgot completely about my first visit, and then after two years he sent word, “Tell Mother, my friend, the light she lit in my life is still burning.”
We are fortunate people. We do not live in shacks made of tin and old cardboard. But each one of us knows what it is like to let the light go out, or to leave the lamp unlit, or to bury the lamp (for any number of reasons, whether it be fear or shame or being just plain stuck) in the corner, under the debris of disillusionment and disconnection.

This I can tell you with all my heart. In the world in which we live, I am so very grateful for the voices of Mercy and Grace. Voices from men and woman alive and well, spilling light among us. And voices from those who have gone on, as we continue to benefit from the light they spill.
And this is why Mother Teresa’s story reignites something inside of me.
Even in (and especially in our vulnerability) we are reminded that very, very simple gestures, can make a profound difference.
Simple gestures; to light a lamp, to give hope, to listen, to embrace, to empower, to hug. One Irish way of saying hug is, “duine a theannadh le do chroi”, to squeeze somebody with your heart.

I don’t tell this story as a motivational tool. As if there is an obligation to “be kind.” I tell it as an affirmation and a reminder (mostly to myself) that within each of us there is a light. And that this light—of hope, dignity, delight, passion, justice, beauty, grace—still shines, regardless of the dirt that covers it. Yes, there are times we forget (and throw our hands into the air). However, there are also times when a simple act of kindness, or gift of compassion, rekindles the light in our own spirit. This gift we give to another, becomes a gift we gratefully receive. In the story, both—the giver and the receiver—are liberated.
Mother Teresa wasn’t in that shack just to be kind. She was there to shine. In reading her book (“Come Be My Light”), you realize that she did so at a time when her own life was racked with doubt and frustration and moments of deep despair. Yes, even from darkness, the light still shines.
More than ever, we need one another.

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 11 —

Today is 9-11. Images are seared into our memories. And remembering the questions: “Where were you? What did you feel? Who did you call?”
Although I remember very vividly, I didn’t know exactly how to answer what I felt. Because there are times when we just don’t have the words.
“Answers, especially those sought in the wake of immeasurable grief are a funny thing. They can be inconclusive and unsatisfactory. Or they can be epiphanic, coming from the most unexpected of places or people,” Gabriella Ferrigine writes about her mother Michaela’s story, who had been scheduled to attend a meeting in one of the twin towers. That meeting was postponed. She lived, but many of her friends who worked in the tower died.
Here’s what I do know: telling stories is a non-negotiable part of healing, and reconciliation.

My good friend The Rev. Dan Matthews (former Rector at Trinity Church Wall Street and St. Paul’s Chapel) told me the story about Mike and Jim, the parish property managers.
Opened in 1766, Manhattan’s oldest public building in continuous use, St. Paul’s Chapel not only survived the blast and fallout (astonishing in that it sits across the street from Ground Zero), it eventually become the rest station, where volunteers took shifts as cooks, masseurs, podiatrists, and counselors for first responders. Cots were provided for exhausted rescuers. Many slept on the wooden pews (still marked and scarred from boots and equipment to this day).
On the Friday after the attack, the nation was asked to observe a moment of silence. Mike and Jim asked Rev. Matthews if they could ring the bells at St. Paul’s just before the noon hour, as a call to remembrance. Although a noble gesture, it wouldn’t be possible given the debris in the vicinity, the fact that part of the chapel had been quarantined and the reality that the bells were disabled. Undeterred, they decided to go ahead with their plan, making their way to the top of the bell tower. On the way, amidst the debris they found an old steel pipe. When they reached the top, Mike told Rev. Matthews that he used that piece of steel “to beat the hell out of that bell.”
Looking out at the scene below, they could see that every worker at ground zero had removed their hard hat, and turned to face the bells. Mike said, “It hit me, that even when things get their worst, I know that there is still hope.”
William Sloane Coffin’s affirmation, “It is hope that helps us keep the faith, despite the evidence, knowing that only in doing so has the evidence any chance of changing.”
I like Michael Gungor’s frame, “Faith comes from listening to the right stories.”
And yes, sometimes, hope is not easy. Because the real world can be a harsh and uncaring place. Cynicism is no surprise. Recently, I heard this, “Anyone who pretends to care, or needs caring for, is only fooling themselves.”
And yet. In a world where so much can go wrong, we are tempted to forget (or do not see) the moments where so much can go right. Despite the debris, moments when we can find the courage to make our way to the bell tower, where Leonard Cohen reminds us to “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering.”
What do we do when the unimaginable happens? When in our vulnerability, we feel completely “at the mercy of.” When those who should know, have no words. I still remember recordings of panicked 911 calls from the towers, “Can you please tell me what’s going on!” “I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t know.”
We want to move on… even though we believe, sometimes, that our wounds will never heal.
But here’s our question: Can our vulnerability shape the very building blocks that make healing possible?
Yes… there’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. It is the great irony, and heartfelt beauty: Our strength and resilience does not come from a show of force or bravado, but in the freedom to be tough enough to be soft.
We are prophets—of steadfastness, justice, compassion, and mercy—when we do not hide our woundedness.
When we find the wherewithal to stand in the middle of it all, even without words. And let the healing begin there, knowing that we are on this journey together.
In St. Paul’s, one reporter overheard a firefighter say, “When I come in that door, I’m covered with blood sometimes, and they hug me. They love me, they take care of me, they treat me as a real human being. And then they feed me, and they massage me, and they give me adjustments. These are my people. This is my place. This is where I come to be with God.”

And. If we don’t know what God has called us to do, we know for certain that we are called to…
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in”

And “Shanah Tovah”—a blessed Rosh Hashanah 2026 to my Jewish Brothers and Sisters, starting just before sundown this evening (which ushers in the Jewish year 5787). It goes straight to the core, when you hear the shofar (ram’s horn).

Prayer (poem) for our week…
God,
To live content with small means,
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion,
to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not rich,
to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly,
to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart,
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely,
await occasions, hurry never,
in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony.
Amen.
William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)

Photo… “Woodland Park Zoo (Seattle, WA). Butterfly garden.” Geri Hanley… Thank you Geri… And thank you all for your photos, please send them to tdh@terryhershey.com

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TerryHershey

author, humorist, inspirational speaker, dad, ordained minister, golf addict, and smitten by French wine. He divides his time between designing sanctuary gardens and sharing his practice of “pausing” and “sanctuary,” to help us rest, renew, and live wholehearted. Terry’s book, This Is The Life, offers the invitation and permission to savor this life, to taste the present moment. Most days, you can find Terry out in his garden–on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound—because he believes that there is something fundamentally spiritual about dirt under your fingernails.