loving mercy

Our Wednesday evening bible study just finished Micah. We obviously spent some time on Micah 6.8. One attendee sent me the following:

More thinking about Micah 6: I think loving mercy means an affective disposition that begins and is cultivated by showing mercy but extends far beyond that toward the character of one's basic constitution. I was thinking, I can do mercy but can do so in a way that begrudges mercy (especially since mercy is often thought of in forensic or economic terms). When Micah calls us to love mercy, I think he calls us to a much more profound thing, and much more difficult thing, but also much more wonderful thing, that is a disposition to God and God's creation that emplaces itself within the dialectic of the prophesy itself (call to unfaithfulness, unfaithfulness, judgment, mercy, call to faithfulness, unfaithfulness...). God calls us to love that, to find our place within it, and to love that in a way that helps us situate our lives within it as the narratival structure of our lives, but also relates us to the world in way that makes us increasingly vulnerable to its suffering (on so many levels, as Micah seems to enjoin mainly through the curse of the rich) and responses to to that vulnerability. Again, this can only be done by specific acts of mercy, practices the cultivate this love, and in turn make these practices more regular parts of who we are as persons. I've been thinking a lot about stuff like this as of late (political ecology, political theology, ordinary language philosophy, etc), and so I was grateful for this word on loving mercy as a way to encapsulate this disposition.