by Sarah Hollier
It feels like the older I grow and the more I learn.... the less I truly know. These days I'm more interested in the questions than in definitive answers. There is one thing I can say I believe in with certainty though: love. And I'm not speaking of romantic love, but something wider, deeper. But what do I mean by that?
As a child and family therapist and crisis clinician, I was often in highly emotional situations with people under extreme duress. Some of this distress got aimed at me and it was easy to become defensive. It was easier to care about the children, especially the young ones, and tempting to blame their adults, who had often fallen short of providing the physical and psychological safety every child needs in order to thrive.
This challenge led me to a practice of taking a breath and reminding myself that even the angriest, most belligerent adult was once a lovable, little baby with infinite possibility. It wasn't hard to see how along the way, hurt, neglect and worse had affected that little person, who in turn, was now affecting the next generation. When I pictured the adult in front of me as the vulnerable beautiful little child he or she once was, and still was, buried deeply within, that image became a conduit for compassion, and my heart was able to expand and connect more effectively to everyone in the room. In doing so, I became less likely to add more shame or blame into the equation, more able to identify the fragments of hope and possibility and healing in what had initially looked like a hopeless mess. I know it sounds unconventional to count love as a critical component of a professional job, but I experienced the miracle of it – the necessity of it – over and over.
Maybe that is one reason Jesus arrived in the form of a helpless tiny baby, to remind us that each one of us started out as a miraculously beautiful small being, unquestionably lovable. But the theme didn't stop there. That baby Jesus grew up to challenge and invite us to love all of our neighbors – and our selves – and then – and this is one of the hardest parts – he went on to expand the definition of neighbors way beyond the obvious and the easy to love ones.