When Israel was a child I loved him,
out of Egypt I called my son.
The more I called them,
the farther they went from me…
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
who took them in my arms;
I drew them with human cords,
with bands of love;
I fostered them like one
who raises an infant to his cheeks;
Yet, though I stooped to feed my child,
they did not know that I was their healer.
My heart is overwhelmed, my pity is stirred”   Hos 11:1-4, 8e-9

The prophet Hosea beautifully describes the divine heart-wrenching experience of loving a child into life, only to have that child wander away, oblivious to the source of life and love that not only created but sustains the child in every moment.

What are the expectations of a parent?  What standard is used in dealing with the ‘waywardness’ of a child?  Though not a parent, I imagine that part of the difficulty in parenting is being able to first see and then balance so to speak what it is that you would want and hope for your child and the pathway that your child decides to take.  If the two do not agree, pain, frustration and anger on both sides (parent and child) can easily surface.  Depending on so many factors, the frustration of thwarted hopes and dreams stemming from parental perspective can help or harm the child’s hopes and dreams.

Obstinacy can be a dangerous default for anyone.  “I am not getting my way.  I am not being heard.  You are telling me something I don’t want to hear”.  All of these experiences can immediately stimulate angry and even resentful offense.  And when we are offended, we many times grasp even more rigidly to our own ideas and opinions and perspectives about the correctness or value of our ‘side’ to whatever it is that is in contention or disagreement.   I think that this stubborn stance can be taken by both children and parents.

We have all been children.  We all have parents.  We all may have an admixture of things about our parents that we either “like” or “dislike.”  Some of us have painful emotional and psychological scars as the result of our relationships with our parents.  If you have felt love from your parent(s), what did it feel like?  Has your interpretation of that love changed or grown over the years?  I know that some of the things that my parents told me and advised me about when I was younger have enabled me to navigate through life.  Whether I agreed or not with what they said or did, the impact and influence on my life by them has been one of encouragement and challenge.

Beyond this, the parent/child dynamic, as described by Hosea, is alive and well in other type of relationships as well.  The way that we are called to relate to each other as adults is not that far off, at least from a Christian perspective.  Siblings, friends, spouses, strangers…all of these relationships and more would fall into this seemingly extraordinary demand of Love that Hosea the prophet is describing.  What is this Love about?

Hosea’s image of holding an infant up to your cheek depicts something that words perhaps cannot explain.  There is a love so strong that simply arises from an unknown depth in this moment of interaction.  It is bigger than what is happening in the moment.  It is almost as if all life and all being that ever was and ever will be is somehow part of that experience. It is naked truth about who we are, where we come from and what we are all called to be.  And yet it remains a mystery still being manifested.

Part of that mystery is the pain of separation.  Love for whatever unknown reason seems to always involve some type of suffering.  Whether it is the difficulty of letting go of the sense of possessing someone or something, or the painful struggle to discover where and to Whom we belong, love defies the many names we give it.  Perhaps that is why St. John tells us in his Gospel that God is Love.  If we really sit with that for a while, it gets more and more ‘unclear’ what exactly Love is, since the mysterious notion of God has now been identified with it. We have to allow the mystery to touch our heart, for us to truly begin to understand.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians describing what Love is and is not (so celebrated in wedding celebrations) (1 COR 13: 4-8) can be applied to Love in all relationships and this description of love is not meant to console us but to awaken us to the ‘dangerous risks’ that we take if we really embrace or engage in the love that is all around us, waiting to be tapped into.  Whether it be the love of a parent, or a child, or a spouse, or a friend, or even, of all things, the enemy…love has demands.  We tend to get confused with many demands of love that are not real.  Many times these false demands show themselves as expectations based upon the idea of love as possession.  Love, though, seems to have more to do with belonging and inclusivity and for this reason it reaches deep down to the core of our very selves.

For me, the description of love as enduring is perhaps one if not the most important aspect.  It seems to cut through a lot of the warm fuzziness that we sometimes associate with love and reveal what it is about this great mystery that is so significant.  We can’t get away from it.  It endures, even though we try to avoid it, thwart it (what we may call ‘sin’), it is in our make-up as creatures of God.  As created in the image of God, we bear love within us in ways hidden and revealed.  And the way we that we can begin to engage in this Love is to ‘suffer’ it.

So what about this ‘suffering?’  A line in Hosea may tell us something about that…

“Yet, though I stooped to feed my child,
they did not know that I was their healer.
 My heart is overwhelmed, my pity is stirred.”

Inasmuch as God is all-powerful, here we can see that paradoxically, this power that God has, or that God is – LOVE – involves ‘stooping.’  God comes down to us and it is this movement downward that we are fed and healed.  It is really the only movement Love can make because, as we hear in the scripture, this Love is born of a heart overwhelmed with compassion.  Love cannot be something other than itself.

So, like the parent in this passage, we as children of God, created in God’s image, must ‘stoop’ down to each other.  This is not a static ‘doormat’ posture, but a movement outward, self-emptying and radically giving. This is a healing that nourishes at the same time, as Hosea says, ‘feeding the child.’ This is a letting go sometimes of our own personal agendas, or at least loosening them up enough, to allow some wiggle room.  This ‘stooping’ is also ‘letting be,’ which means accepting life and people as they are first, without trying to change everyone and everything.   To ‘stoop’ is to withhold judgment so as to allow compassion.  This is not moral disintegration, but more like creating a platform wherein the ‘issue,’ whatever it is, can be engaged on a personal level where truth and responsibility can flow from compassion between people – real food!

God’s ‘stooping’ down is creation and Incarnation, feeding us, entering into our lives – this is Jesus, this is the Christ.  This is the kenosis, or the emptying out that God in and as Love does in creation, incarnation, and salvation (healing).  The ‘stooping’ is the Love and this divine selflessness, in the very act itself, IS feeding and healing us.  And, as the body of Christ, if we really believe that, we must ‘stoop’ down to heal and feed each other as well.

Maybe the healing is initially simply learning to recognize the potential for healing in every moment of our lives.  This takes practice and interaction. Healing cannot take place in isolation.  It is through interaction with God and others that we receive and give healing.  Healing is the waking up to the possibility of healing itself, and then of all things participating in it.  When we participate in healing we are feeding and being fed.

Hosea tells us “the more I called them, the farther they went from me.”  It’s hard to ‘wake up.’  Sometimes we have to be thrown out of bed so to speak.  But the most important thing is that the possibility of waking up and being healed never disappears.  This is Love’s endurance.  This is the God who stands always with open arms – Love’s eternal aching!

What might this look like?  It does not have to be dramatic at all.  It can simply be stepping back and appreciating life for the gift that it is.  It can be stepping out of a comfortable situation or way of thinking and really listening to someone with a different perspective and trying your hardest not to hold so tightly to your own opinion so that something could possibly grow within the interaction.  It could simply be sitting quietly next to someone – you know or don’t know – and being mindful of the mystery and wonder of their life.

This is about taking baby steps not just outside your world but into someone else’s world.  The compassion of love is always found at the margins, because it’s only at the margins that worlds can intersect and create shared worlds.  We create margins as exclusive boundaries and limits, without realizing that they are thresholds to be crossed into newness (resurrection).  When we can begin to honor thresholds or liminal spaces in a way that we ‘stoop’ or humble ourselves in the presence of another, then we can begin to heal and feed, to be healed and be fed, and so to know the Healer —– LoveFeed!

Peace,

Thomas