Mom, stop the truck!” yelled Chelsea.
“I can't stop here, there's no shoulder on this road,” said Linda as she clamped on the binders anyway.
“That's good, mom. Now back up about 30 metres.”
“I can't back down the wrong side of the road. What happens if another car comes along and smacks into me?”
“Just do it mom, please! There's hardly ever any traffic on this road.”
Linda carefully backed up the pickup about 30 metres.
“Look you guys. Over there on the bank next to the road. Do you see them?” said Chelsea.
Our 14-year-old daughter loves all animals, especially babies. Just a few metres away on the bank going up from the road there were three little bears, each about the size of a small beagle dog. Obviously born this spring, one was black the other two were brown. They seemed involved in a combination food foray and fistfight. As we watched, one of the brown cubs pasted the black one in the face and then all three became locked in a ball of mortal combat. They rolled part way down the hill before scampering apart to continue poking around for edible morsels. We sat in the truck enthralled. Chelsea's digital camera was rapping off pictures from the back seat.
“I wonder where the mother is?” said Linda.
“See that real deep ditch between the road and the bank,” I said. “Why don't you get out and peek down there? That's where she has got to be. We just can't see her because the ditch is lower than our line of sight. Besides, it's covered with alder brush.”
“You trying to retire early on my life insurance?” Linda chuckled, as she rolled up the truck window. “I feel vulnerable sitting inside a full two tonnes of steel knowing that the cubs are right there in front of us and just a couple of metres away, mama bear is watching us.”
Linda was right. We craned every part of our bodies looking to see if we could find even a piece of mama bear but not one of us were offering to venture an inch outside of the pickup truck to further the search. We all knew the female black bear's reputation for fierce attacks whenever her cubs were, in her opinion, in any danger at all. Even though we had spent the better part of the whole day looking for bears to photograph on the scat-splattered road just east of the isolated coastal hamlet of Bella Coola and even though we had a female bear hidden just a couple of metres away begging to be photographed with her three cubs, 400 pounds of potentially irked mama bear was enough to keep all of our fannies glued to the seat of the pickup truck.
Mother's Day is this month. For me this year, the image of the three bears and the three of us held at bay by an unseen mother's passionate care is what is on my mind. It causes me to marvel at our Creator-God who created the instincts of motherhood in the first place. The powerful protective instincts of motherhood are, in my mind at least, a wonderful gift of God for which I give thanks.
For me though it goes much further than that. First published in 1872, Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge wrote in his Systematic Theology, “A mother's love is a mystery and a wonder. It is the most perfect analogue of the love of God.” This seems to be the thought expressed by the author of Isaiah (66:13) when he writes about the protection and care of God for the vulnerable returned exiles to Jerusalem: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” If we take seriously this Scripture, and if we take seriously Genesis 1:27 concerning God creating humanity, both male and female, in his image, then I am left to ponder what attribute of God is imaged in the powerful mothering love and care that I see around me. I am left to ponder it and somehow I find myself deeply comforted by it.
God created humanity in His image and ever since humanity has been attempting to return the favour. This is one way I have often thought about the problem of creating God in my own image. It is true that we need to be careful not to do this, for about the same time some of us find great comfort in mothering love as it may apply to God, others of us have parental experiences that are far from perfect. As one woman once said to me as I insisted on referring to God as Our Father, “I can't use that phrase for God. My father physically and sexually abused me all my childhood.” I understand what she meant. I should not find much comfort in mothering love as it applies to God since my own mother, whom I was especially close to as a wee child, gave me up when I was five years old.
But the Bible says: “If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.” (Psalm 27:10) I think that the way this washes out for me is that all the father and mother imagery for God in the Bible is given to us with the expectation we have understood the first three chapters of Genesis. In other words, we are created in God's image and only a small taste of God's character, only a small picture if you like, is deposited in us. Secondly, with the fall of humanity, that image became distorted with sin. It's still there, but often miles away from perfect.
All that being said, I find even more hope in looking at mothering love, care and protection around me and pondering God. If what I see in animal and human terms is but a small imperfect hint of the divine form, now I am totally blown out of the water by it. Happy Mother's Day!
