Where is the Call for Love?

An important concept in the Course is the idea that beneath every seeming attack or mistake is a call for love. Sometimes the phrase "call for help" is used. But how do we recognize a call for love, and when do we interpret it as a call for help? Let us consider some scenarios which you may recognize as similar to experiences you have had. The specific details may differ, but your emotional reaction to the content of the scenario is something you may recognize from your own past.

The Disloyal Colleague

It's Monday morning. You are in a staff meeting. You present your position on a controversial issue, when suddenly one of your colleagues, a friend who has always supported you in such controversies in the past, turns on you and attacks your position-- and by inference, you. He is siding with "the opposition" against you. You are left isolated.

The Faithless Husband

Your husband is having an affair. You just discovered the proof, although you have suspected it for months. When you confront him, he admits it, but tearfully asks you to forgive him. "It didn't mean anything," he says. "It's you I love. I've never done this before. But lately you've been so busy I felt lonely and abandoned. So it just happened."

The Manipulative Mother-in-Law

Your mother-in-law is on the phone again. A tree has fallen over in her yard. She wants you to come over and somehow haul the tree into an upright position, stabilize it, and anchor it to the outside wall of the house. It is a very large tree, rotted inside, and you know it will die even if you manage to get it upright. Another severe storm might even cause the tree to fall again, this time perhaps taking part of the house with it. She can well afford to pay a tree expert to deal with the problem. But she wants you to do it, because the tree expert might tell her that her plan will not work. This has happened before, in other areas. She wants it her way, and she wants you to do it. If the tree dies, or damages the house, you know you will be the blamee. This, too, has happened before.

The Sick Friend

Your friend is very, very ill. Terminal, they say. She frequently brings her small children to your house in the evening, collapses on the sofa, exhausted and sick, and falls asleep. The children are hungry and disheveled. Her life is a mess, even before she got sick. You have seen the extent of her unrelieved bitterness and resentment against her ex-husband, and her anger at her parents, who she feels have abandoned her. She holds grievances and projects blame.

What do we do in such situations? How do we feel? How should we react?

The Course says that in each of these hypothetical scenarios, there is a call for love. The Course says we should see the call for love.

Here's how we might react: with what the Course calls "the face of innocence." "It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions and it looks, at times with pity, on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good within an evil world." (T 31.V)

The face of innocence says, "Who, me? I'm not even involved in this." From behind the mask, the face of innocence, it is a rapid and slippery descent through victim to victimizer. "Why me? I didn't ask for this! I am a helpless victim! I don't deserve this attack/betrayal/manipulation/demand." And almost instantly, "I have to defend myself. I will attack back--strictly in self-defense, of course. I was victimized, so I am justified." In other words, "It's you! You are the bad guy, the victimizer, so you force me to become a victimizer in self-defense."

This is usually where we stop. We enter into the cycle of attack-defense-attack-defense and the initial event now escalates into a war with the disloyal colleague. Or we end the relationship with the faithless husband and carry anger and bitterness forever. We may angrily refuse the demand of the manipulative mother-in-law, refuse to be manipulated, and feel guilty and angry that we were put in such a position--or we may accede to the demand, allow ourselves to be manipulated, and carry a seething anger at the person who puts us in this position, and at ourselves for not knowing how to get out of it gracefully.

Or we offer help: we know that the sick friend is contributing to her own sickness with her angry thoughts and lack of forgiveness, so we show her how she could change her thinking and thereby change her life and maybe even get well. We give her the Course, and read relevant sections to her while she rests on the sofa.

If we are willing, we could look behind the face of innocence-victim-victimizer and ask the next question: what is the call for love? More importantly, what is the call for love I am feeling? We can get clear about our own call for love in the situation, the call for love we experience as a form of fear (anger, resentment, frustration, sadness, attack, wanting to fix someone). And after we have identified our own call for love, we can ask the question, what is her/his call for love? When we are willing to look straight at the call for love of the other person, our masks and anger melt. We experience our brother or sister as ourselves. We experience our essence, which is love.

I think this is a very important point that Judy is making here – that it is important to acknowledge our own love need in difficult situations especially. The Course teaches that “I am never upset for the reason I think”, that when I am angry or upset it is because I have an expectation that some person or situation has not met. And underlying that expectation is a perceived love need, or as the Course would say, a call for love. When I am in my reaction mode, both the expectation and call for love are outside my awareness. I have to pause, take a breath, and offer my current perception to the Holy Spirit. I find that when I fully acknowledge my own love need in this way, it is like receiving it. I no longer need the person or situation to give it to me. - DG

Where is the Call for Help?

But this is where it gets confusing, because the Course specifically mentions "call for love" eight times, and "call for help" thirteen times. What is the difference? Or are they the same?

The Course says the following things are a call for love: Attack. Fear. Sickness. Hatred. Every mistake. (Chapters 12 and 19)

And the Course says the following things are a call for help: Attack. Grandiosity. Hate and fantasy. Mistakes. Sin. (Chapters 12, 13, 16, 19, 21 and Manual 29.6.6) It would appear that the terms are used almost interchangeably. We might infer, then, that there are times when a call for love should be responded to with help. But what is "help?" A call for help has been defined (by David and Rebecca Grudermeyer) as a call for love paired with a willingness to heal. If I offer help in the form of unasked-for advice or unasked-for theology, it is an attack. If I, in the spirit of friendship, try to fix someone who has not asked to be fixed (the sick friend), it is an attack. It is not love. On the other hand, if someone does ask to be fixed (the mother-in-law) and we do the fixing, but resent it, it is an attack. If we refuse the request but feel guilty, it is an attack. Are the disloyal colleague and the faithless husband calling for help? The colleague is probably not expressing a willingness to heal. The husband may be--it would take some exploration.

How Can I Be Truly Helpful? Remember the "Helper's Prayer"? "You can do much on behalf of your own healing and that of others if, in a situation calling for help, you think of it this way:

I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal." (T 2.V.A.18.8)

Help is listening within, asking for guidance, allowing the Holy Spirit to teach us to heal. It is not having preconceived ideas about the form that help will take. It is being willing to give love without help and without resentment that our help is not desired. This does not mean that concrete help should not be given. The sick friend, who has never wanted help in healing her painful life, may need love in the form of feeding and bathing the children, bringing her a cup of broth, giving her a foot massage, and being present without judging, or even speaking.

You might take the mother-in-law to lunch and listen to her problem about the tree, and express your support and concern for her. You can express your empathy for her feeling of vulnerability and helplessness. You can then explain (firmly but gently) that while you are unable to do what she asks, you know that she will be able to find just the right tree expert to take care of it. For the remainder of the lunch, you might gently steer the conversation back to areas in which you can give her love. Since you will then be free from guilt or resentment, she will feel loved rather than attacked. And she will not even notice that you said No. She will have gotten what she really wanted when she made her demand: love.

There is never a time when it is inappropriate to give love in response to a call for love, even when help is not desired. Sometimes the love can only be given from a distance, in your heart and mind. Sometimes it can be given only in mundane concrete forms. The help I really want to give--the salvation described in the Course--cannot be offered.

Or can it? How can I heal my brother's mind? Only by healing my mind about my brother's mind. I can give up the idea that I understand the other person's motives, pain, helplessness, or reactions. I can give up judgment about what I think is going on. I can give up thinking I know what is going on. I can give up thinking that my brother or sister is separate from me, and that I have to fix or attack because they are so unlike me, so other, so separate and alien.

I can remember that "I trust my brothers, who are one with me." (Lesson 201) I can trust that the Holy Spirit is working with them, and that they are capable of finding their own way. I can trust that their Divinity has never been threatened, in spite of current circumstances. If they willingly ask me for help and healing, I can invite the Holy Spirit in, then join with them in a mutual teaching/ learning experience.

That is how to be truly helpful.