Hosea is the prophet of pathos. Not his own; God’s. Hosea’s God is angry at Israel, but the divine emotion that runs most profoundly through his prophecy is anguish. The book relies upon an extended metaphor – God as betrayed lover – that assumes even more power because God commands Hosea to take the metaphor literally, ordering the prophet to marry a harlot.
Haftarat Va-yetze and the Haphtarah Va-yishlach (for next week) force us to consider this prophet in greater depth, for both of them come from Hosea. (Sephardic custom, which will be considered in another cycle, takes next week’s prophecy from Obadiah). That means taking pathos seriously. This God is really hurt:
Only I the Lord have been your God
Ever since the land of Egypt
You have never known a [true] God but Me,
You have never had a helper other than Me.
I looked after you in the desert,
In a thirsty land.
When they grazed, they were sated;
When they were sated, they grew haughty;
And so they forgot Me….
Like a bear robbed of her young I attack them
And rip open the casing of their hearts.
Divine pathos generates an odd theology, because it seems to turn God into something of a human being. Abraham Joshua Heschel, who first emphasized God’s pathos, attempted to forestall such a comparison. He had to concede, however, that “the language the prophets employed to describe God’s supreme concern was an anthropomorphism to end all anthropomorphisms.”
Let us put theoretical questions aside for now, and consider the theology’s implications: how should God’s anguish affect our spiritual lives and practices? Let us imagine God not as the terrible Holy One of Blessing, but rather as the Great Friend whom we have wronged and hurt. How would we repair our relationship with our Friend?
Showing Up
If someone feels I have abandoned them, then the first thing I need to do is be with them. Sometimes, 90% of compassion is just showing up. I need to think about ways in which God can be present in my life. But in particular it means establishing the appropriate context. In which situations can I feel spiritual and close to God? Are there ways in which I can generate those situations?
This will obviously mean different things to different people. For some, it will be traditional prayer attendance. For others, it will be solitude. Others will see their spiritual life in connection with another activity, such as being with their children or performing charity. I often find that a physical location is crucial — the right exterior space can make an enormous difference in welcoming God to my interior space. But the point is to make time for this spiritual activity. If you care about someone, you will make time for them. Why would it be any different with God?
Kavvanah
There is being present and being present. If we seek closeness with others (or even the Other), then we need to have intention, or kavvanah. The rabbis firmly (and rightly) rejected the notion that prayer does not “count” without the proper kavvanah – sometimes, we are simply not in the prayer space, and holding otherwise opens up disquieting possibilities of religious thought police. Still, if we are trying to care for others, we obviously would want to be as present as possible for them.
So what best generates intention in our prayer life? Perhaps it means praying more intensively on fewer words. Benedictine monks developed a practice known as “>Serenity Prayer forms the perfect template, but the more we meditate on what we are truly longing for, the more we can develop our own petitionary prayers that express deeper feelings.
In this sense, then, petitionary prayer is not so much asking God for something as opening ourselves to God, releasing and confessing our vulnerabilities to God. And that is the way to show God that we have not forgotten, that God means something to us because we rely on God so much.
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Can we do all of this? I know I can’t. But I can try. I can reach out. If Hosea’s prophecy rings true, God will forgive my failings. And nothing can rekindle a relationship better than true and deep forgiveness.
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