Hosea 11:1-11

Pentecost +11 - Year C 

Hosea 11:1-11

This is a good passage on which to use Spiral Dynamics. Print this chart:

Now ask about parental expectations. “The more I called to them, the more they went from me.” We see this all about us, parents yelling at their kids to, “Come here!” This kind of distanced power just doesn’t work. It is far more efficient, kind, and teaching to go to the young one and walk with them to where you were. It saves getting angry and allows them to learn why it is that they were called and they need to check out a next call. Just a couple of times and there is a new relationships developing.

Going after someone with wrath in your voice seldom would attract that someone to you. In fact a whistle or some other identifiable and easy to make sound cuts through all the yelling.

Eventually, when those now being chastised reach a certain amount of experience they may well look back and acknowledge they could have reached this point in their life much sooner than they did. Hopefully they will learn about the folly of expecting someone without their perspective to grasp it in a moment and will walk with them to a new insight rather than demanding they “understand” right now.

There is much religion and G*D could learn from a basic understanding of life-stages. It would also help a congregation understand a different way of interacting with one another, as their fellow parishioners bring together all the stages at one time. How might we love where folks are and walk with them that they might take another step and at at the same time love our stage and movement toward a next?