Sermon: A Meditation on Gentleness (Isaiah 11), Sept 5th, 2021

Reflection: A Meditation on Gentleness 

Scripture:  Isaiah 11

 

   The wolf shall live with the lamb,

   the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

   and a little child shall lead them. 

   The cow and the bear shall graze,

   their young shall lie down together;

   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 

   The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

   and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 

   They will not hurt or destroy

   on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

   as the waters cover the sea.  

Today, I would like to share a reflection with you on gentleness. 

 

Jesus’ beatitudes include the one about the poor and the meek: 

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” 

 

The prophet in Isaiah sings that the holy one “shall decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” 

 

In Hebrew, gentleness is expressed as “navah” which means one who is humble and low.

 

In the world, we witness so much of what is opposite of gentleness: violence, war, crime, hate, massacre, genocide, retaliation, … 

 

What is gentleness? How can it be an “attribute of God”?

 

My hope is that a meditation on gentleness will offer all of us a new perspective. When we care for one another (which we call pastoral care/congregational care), gentleness is probably the primary virtue, the element of faith as we give and receive care. 

 

I have been inspired by Power of Gentleness by Anne Dufourmantelle. (Show the book cover.) 

Dufourmantelle begins her book with the quote “Gentleness is invincible” (Marcus Aurelius).

 

“Gentleness is an enigma. Taken up in a double movement of welcoming and giving, it appears on the threshold of passages signed off by birth and death. Because it has its degree of intensity, because it is a symbolic force, and because it has a transformative ability over things and beings, it is a power.

 

A person, a stone, a thought, a gesture, a colour… can demonstrate gentleness. How do we approach such singularity?” 

 

“Life places gentleness within us originally. We would think to grasp it from the source — a child sleeping soundly, the sweet taste of its mother’s breast milk, voices that soothe, chant, caress — 

 

We guess it to be elsewhere, in the movement of an animal, the rise of darkness in the summer, the truce of a battle, the meeting of a gaze. We recognize it from the bedside of the dying, their gaze that calmly passes through their feverless agony, but even there it won’t let itself be grasped… 

 

We perform acts of gentleness. We demonstrate gentleness. We soften the end of a life, its beginning…”   

 

 

When we offer care, when we take the role of caregiver, the proper language of communication for care would be gentleness. Gentleness is not just an attitude, but the concrete way of communication.   

 

Have you ever watched Youtube videos or Facebook posts that show how some animals offer care, not only for their own young ones, but also in adopting other species: A famous one is the sheep Albert and the elephant Themba. (After 6-month-old elephant cub Themba was orphaned and left by her herd, the workers of Shamwari Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in South Africa decided to save her life. At first, Albert the sheep was a little aggressive toward this stranger, but later his heart melted and he became the baby elephant’s friend and mentor.)  

 

  

(In Kenya, a little baby hippo was saved after being isolated from his family during a severe tsunami. The 650-pound cub was given the name Owen and was placed in an aviary with a 130-year-old turtle named Mzee. At first, Mzee didn’t like its new neighbor, but later, and for two years, Mzee became Owen’s mentor. 

 

The lioness Kamunyak (’blessed one’) adopted about 6 oryx calves after she killed the mother of one of the cubs during a hunt. The lioness couldn’t breastfeed the weak calves so she called on humans for help. She let them feed the babies under her guidance. Unfortunately, the lioness couldn’t protect all “her calves” from being attacked by another lions’ pride.

 

These images and stories were never featured enough, or at all, in the documentaries I grew up watching on TV. Now I understand that what we believed about the lives of animals was largely human projection and conviction that the survival of the fittest and the law of jungle are “natural.”

 

The chapter I find very interesting in Power of Gentleness is where the author explores animality. Think about those moments. The beginnings of animals and humans. Without care, does a newborn survive? Doesn’t it need to be protected, surrounded, spoken to, thought of, or imagined so it can truly enter the world? What does it become without gentleness? The study of early attachment indicates that the baby’s body, like that of the animal, retains in memory all the intensities (and all the deficiencies) that have been lavished upon it. Any serious attack will endanger, now or later, its capacity to survive. 

 

It was May, 2006, and I was so excited to welcome Peace, my first child, to the world. Everything on the shopping list - cloth diapers, breastfeeding pillow, baby clothes, blankets, toys - was all purchased and ready to use. I arranged the best midwife in Seoul and had a wonderful home birth. Mom stayed with us for the first week caring for Peace and I, and then went back to her home. On the first morning of being alone with my baby, without my mom, (Min-Goo was gone to his work) my newborn Peace who was lying on the bed soundly sleeping, woke up and started to cry. I watched him, not knowing what to do. A few minutes passed. Peace began to cry harder and louder. I panicked, ‘What’s wrong?’ I studied what to do each month during the 9-month pregnancy, but I didn’t really prepare for baby care after the child was born! I almost called Mom at her home and Min-Goo at church to say they should come back. ‘Baby is crying! I don’t know why and what to do!’ I was almost frightened. Now the baby was crying very loudly and he was upset! In an instant I lifted up the baby instead of lifting the phone. It was a miracle/mystery to me. The tiny, tired, frustrated Peace stopped crying in one sec, in my hands. In the air. I held him close to me. All of a sudden, he was so calm and peaceful. We both were awe-struck by this sacred strangeness. That was the most wondrous moment for me for a long time. 

 

Care is a ground-breaking and human history/or earth history way of survival and sustenance. It curbs the disease, closes up the wound, alleviates pain, calms the cry. 

 

Dufourmantelle continues, “Those who work with very premature babies know this, who are fragile but also have astonishing resilience, may be due to the fact that a word, an act, have been given with tenderness.” 

 

A year ago, one of our members told me a story: a Choir member was sick and alone for days and Eileen went to visit her. As if it is just so natural to give care, Eileen wiped her friend’s face with a warm wet cloth, talked to her, and thereby consoled her soul. It is our animality, humanity, spirituality to know how to care for others. Gentleness as “care for the soul” (Patocka) is still making up the world. 

 

When we offer care, or take the role of caregiver, the essential and profound way of communicating our intention is through the intensity in gentleness, the intimate connection to our animality. It reaches our basic needs of safety, protection and healing. 

 

I wonder about what God’s animality is like. We are created in God’s image. Then, God must have something like our animality, the mother mammal’s warming and cleaning her young by licking and feeding and protecting them. How does God’s tender animality touch our needs? 

 

I believe God’s primary language of communication, including God’s body language when God offers care, cares for me, cares for you, cares for the creation, is gentleness. It wouldn’t mean only that God does not use coercive power. Or, God talks in sugar-coated words and spoon-feeds us, as if we are babies permanently. Rather, genuine gentleness, and therefore its truer power is, the intelligence of courage. Gentleness embraces the other’s vulnerability with a higher degree of compassion than simple care. It’s not just the intention of love, but cultivating love through mistakes and saying I’m sorry. Such gentleness changes the world politically too, as it is the same element that helps build respect and equity between the couple. Gentleness crumbles hierarchy and discrimination.

 

Lastly, I would like to close this reflection with questions: 

 

• How would you use the power of gentleness in the situation in which you and someone you care for find one another as wolf and lamb, leopard and child, calf and lion, cow and bear, lion and ox? 

 

• What would be helpful when you wish to give/receive/share care with them with the key of gentleness?