Gentle Whispers
‘All your allies have forgotten you;
they care nothing for you.
I have struck you as an enemy would
and punished you as would the cruel,
because your guilt is so great
and your sins so many.
Why do you cry out over your wound,
your pain that has no cure?
Because of your great guilt and many sins
I have done these things to you.‘But all who devour you will be devoured;
all your enemies will go into exile.
Those who plunder you will be plundered;
all who make spoil of you I will despoil.
But I will restore you to health
and heal your wounds,’
declares the Lord.Jeremiah 30:14-17
I’ve been thinking about power a lot lately. Alongside my philosophical and theological reflections on power, I am parenting two kids with big personalities. It was all fine and good to reflect on big ideas when I was single, living alone in grad school, but theology amid family life has risen to a new level of self-implication. I have to admit. I don’t always live out my ideals of low-weight power and self-giving love in day-to-day life.
During Lent, we have the chance to reflect on our lives and how we are making choices that pull us toward God or away. This reflection puts us on a path of cultivating virtues such as humility and patience as we draw near to Good Friday. I feel like my interactions with power are part of my assessment during Lent this year.
I don’t know what I expected parenting tiny humans would be like, but I know I did not expect it to surface my flaws and misunderstandings about what it means to be human on such a regular basis. These tiny humans in my house are whole other people with their own perspectives, plans and needs. I remember naively noticing this when I was pregnant with my first child and felt movement inside my body that was not coming from my body. In hindsight, that was just the beginning.
Now, eight years later, I have noticed that despite the interconnectedness of our family life, my kids cannot read my mind or see my internal calendar for the day. When my plans start to get behind schedule, or I am feeling stressed by an email or text message that just came in, my temptation is to get things back on track by asserting more control over the situation. It doesn’t matter what other needs are present in the room, my need to stick to the plan (even if I didn’t share that plan with anyone else) motivates my power move as the manager of this moment.
I didn’t think I would be the kind of parent who insisted on my way, but I also didn’t know that kids could have so many of their own creative and imaginative plans for every moment of daily life. On a good day, I can set aside my plan, follow the lead of my kid – who is now a Mario villain, or a dinosaur, or a dump truck – and still get to the goal. On a weary day, my energy goes in the opposite direction to stick to my plan (even if it’s not perfect) and enforce that everyone else around me falls in line with no objections.
I am not the first person to learn that plans change. In the lectionary reading for today from Jeremiah 30:12-22, we listen in as Jeremiah delivers the news to Israel that their plan to remain an autonomous nation and flourish independently was not going to happen. That darkness was coming, exile was coming. While many of the messages in the Old Testament prophetic texts don’t offer much hope, this passage includes that the oppressor wouldn’t rule forever, they would eventually also be devoured and there would eventually be healing.
And yet, the healing of wounds and the oppressor no longer oppressing isn’t quite like any of us expect. The trajectory of God’s people isn’t to return to independent flourishing as a nation without scars after a brief hiatus. The trajectory is a transformation into what it means to be the people of God amidst the power moves of the world, scars and all.
I can see this transformation in myself when I have tried something different with my power in my household. Several times in the last few months I have crawled into bed next to my 5-year-old and snuggled as we have a heart-to-heart talk. These snuggles often happen after the direct approach to getting my way has not worked. My head tells me to yell louder and to make it clear to his mind that we just need to make my plan work. Yet, what his body needs (and probably my body, too) is the gentle touch and calm voice of listening and seeing him. These talks helped him say the things I suspected in his own way and in his own voice. It helps him hear me better in a calm voice when our nervous systems are calm again. And, no matter if he gets his way or I get my way or we make a new plan, we both come out of our snuggle feeling like we can do this together.
It baffles me that God has enough capacity and patience to snuggle in next to us with gentleness over and over again; that God waits for us to slow our breathing, receive the gentle touch of the Spirit and hear the calm whisper of Love. My own human capacity runs out, but God’s capacity is beyond what we can ask or imagine.
What if a blessing of the season of Lent is that God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – reveals their true character in this trajectory of self-giving love?
What if the path to the cross that we follow during Lent isn’t a detour in the story, but the central plot?
This Lent, how could we see love as the centre of God’s character and allow that to change how we use power?
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