“Unconditional”
What an odd word. One of the things in the church that I find weird is the way the BULK of the church (i.e. everyone bar the minister) is called “LAY” and therefore defined by what they are not: Lay people = NOT ordained. It’s odd. Why aren’t the ministers defined as the “Un-lay” or the “Not lay” or the “other”.
Unconditional strikes me as a bit the same. Alfie Kohn talks about conditional parenting as witholding love – i.e. with time out and the like, it is actually punishment via withdrawal of parental love. This is part of conditional parenting – the children experience it as “I love you when you are good/do what I say/conform” or “I don’t love you/give cuddles/share affection when you don’t do what I say is right”.
Un-conditional therefore, is not that. But it’s not the way I would ever define “unconditional” although “without conditions” is true. Unconditional is always, ever present, unswerving (for another “un” word), complete, categorical. Unconditional parenting is parenting that parents consistently with love…even through mischeif 
.
In one of my uni books I read that we are supposed to have “unconditional positive regard” for clients and at the time I thought it was a load of rubbish – who can possibly attest to that? Jesus?
Clearly I don’t like people enough and if I found a family consistently abusing a small child it would be difficult to have unconditional positive regard for them. But…Alfie Kohn’s talk always makes me think theologically (though he doesn’t talk theologically) -
Unconditional parenting is based on the fundamental goodness of humans and the basic law of love. It’s probably why I relate to him so much. This must be the same for professional approaches. Hard, for sure – but aren’t we asked to show love to all people? Unconditional positive regard? Clearly I bomb out with that at times but it’s all making sense now and hearing it from 3 different angles of my life (faith, parenting, profession) makes me think I need to keep it in the front of my mind and practice practice practice as Buddhism says…
… and what i know that you can do is ‘be with’ people through whatever it is that they experience. You can do that. So thus, you can ‘be with’ people whatever ‘hole’ they are in… and part of understanding is hearing what is in the heart of the individual. I find that is helpful it getting past the ‘action’ (of the individual) and getting to what is the individual experiencing… (thanks to kent hoffman, circle of security, for that understanding).