Windows of Love

Christians will be mere conformists and maintainers of the _status quo_.

_Sense of Initiative_

The third objective of love is to help the individual achieve a sense ofinitiative. At the age of four or five, a child is faced with his nextcrisis and must take his next big step. He must find out what kind ofperson he is going to be. His search will be strengthened by hisexperience of trust, and by whatever power of autonomy he has. Dr.Erikson points out that he wants to be like his parents who seem verywonderful to him, but who, at the same time, present him with very realthreats. During this age he plays at being his parents. According to Dr.Erikson, there are three strong developments which help him, but whichalso contribute to his crisis. “First, he learns to move around morefreely and more violently, and therefore establishes a wider, and so itseems to him, an unlimited radius of goals. Two, his sense of languagebecomes perfected to the point where he understands and can ask aboutmany things just enough to misunderstand them thoroughly; and three,both language and locomotion permit him to expand his imagination overso many things that he cannot avoid frightening himself with what hehimself has dreamed and thought up. Nevertheless, out of all this hemust emerge with a sense of unbroken initiative as a basis for a high,and yet realistic, sense of ambition and independence.”[19]

Initiative is the power that moves the individual to take over the roleof others; the boy, his father; the girl, her mother; later as thedriver of the car, and later still, leadership roles of various kinds.The struggles in the process are accompanied by feelings of anxiety, ofinadequacy, and of guilt. Feelings of inadequacy in relation to the sizeand powers of the adult can be considerable; and the feelings of guilt,in response to the daydreams about replacing Daddy, for instance, arecrucial, and too often are unrecognized by many parents and teachers.They need to recognize and accept the developmental reasons for thechild’s preoccupations and fantasies about himself in relation to themand their roles and functions. Furthermore, it is entirely appropriatefor him to be physically aggressive toward others, to overwhelm themwith his incessant chattering, his aggressive getting into things, andhis insatiable curiosity about everything. The objective of love at thistime is to provide the child with a reasonable freedom within which todevelop his initiative with a minimum sense of guilt in relation to itsexercise, and with the hope that by so doing he will become a personwhose creativity will not be frustrated by an overdeveloped sense ofguilt.

In contrast, many people are embarrassed by recognition of theirachievements, and are prevented from achievement because of guiltfeelings that block their creative efforts. Unfortunately, too muchreligious teaching has made people feel guilty about initiative andaggressiveness, both of which can be expressed creatively. From

animals have in every case sprung from pond animals which have graduallyadapted themselves to do without water altogether. Life, according tothis theory, began in the ocean, spread up the estuaries into thegreater rivers, thence extended to the brooks and lakes, and finallymigrated to the ponds, puddles, swamps and marshes, whence it took atlast, by tentative degrees, to the solid shore, the plains, and themountains. Certainly the tenacity of life shown by pond animals is veryremarkable. Our own English carp bury themselves deeply in the mud inwinter, and there remain in a dormant condition many months entirelywithout food. During this long hibernating period, they can be preservedalive for a considerable time out of water, especially if their gillsare, from time to time, slightly moistened. They may then be sent to anyaddress by parcels post, packed in wet moss, without serious damage totheir constitution; though, according to Dr. Guenther, these dissipatedproducts of civilisation prefer to have a piece of bread steeped inbrandy put into their mouths to sustain them beforehand. In Holland,where the carp are not so sophisticated, they are often kept the wholewinter through, hung up in a net to keep them from freezing. At firstthey require to be slightly wetted from time to time, just toacclimatise them gradually to so dry an existence; but after a whilethey adapt themselves cheerfully to their altered circumstances, andfeed on an occasional frugal meal of bread and milk with Christianresignation.

Of all land-frequenting fish, however, by far the most famous is theso-called climbing perch of India, which not only walks bodily out ofthe water, but even climbs trees by means of special spines, near thehead and tail, so arranged as to stick into the bark and enable it towriggle its way up awkwardly, something after the same fashion as the’looping’ of caterpillars. The tree-climber is a small scaly fish,seldom more than seven inches long; but it has developed a specialbreathing apparatus to enable it to keep up the stock of oxygen on itsterrestrial excursions, which may be regarded as to some extent theexact converse of the means employed by divers to supply themselves withair under water. Just above the gills, which form of course its naturalhereditary breathing apparatus, the climbing perch has invented a newand wholly original water chamber, containing within it a frilled bonyorgan, which enables it to extract oxygen from the stored-up waterduring the course of its aerial peregrinations. While on shore it picksup small insects, worms, and grubs; but it also has vegetarian tastes ofits own, and does not despise fruits and berries. The Indian jugglerstame the climbing perches and carry them about with them as part oftheir stock in trade; their ability to live for a long time out of watermakes them useful confederates in many small tricks which seem verywonderful to people accustomed to believe that fish die almost at oncewhen taken out of their native element.

The Indian snakehead is a closely allied species, common in the shallowponds and fresh-water tanks of India, where holy Brahmans bathe anddrink and die and are buried, and most of which dry up entirely during

childhood on, lives are hedged about by prohibitions in relation topersons bearing authority, by belittling attitudes toward themselves andtoward their drives to compete and to get ahead, so that people becomeself-restricted and are kept from living up to their inner capacities orfrom using their powers of imagination and feeling. While some withdrawinto a dull kind of existence, others overcompensate in a great show oftireless initiative and a quality of “go-at-it-iveness” at all costs.These people often overdo to a point where they can never relax, andthey feel that their worth as people consists entirely in what they aredoing rather than in what they are.

The objective of love is to help the child accept the necessarystructures, authorities, and personal roles in relation to which he mustlive, so that he may grow in his capacity to love persons and to usethings. During this stage of life, children often turn to other adultsfor companionship and guidance. They do so because the conflicts betweenthemselves and these new adults do not seem to be as great as with theirown parents. They need these “fresh” relationships where they canexercise initiative without too much conflict and guilt. Here the schooland church, with its trained teachers and workers, have an opportunityto supplement, and even to correct, the experiences that children arehaving at home. We should remember, however, that the identificationswith the parent are important, and that the experiences the youngstersare having with others should be of a complementary nature, even if theyalso are corrective.

Another and supplementary objective of love is the provision of arelationship by parents or others in which a spirit of equality makespossible an experience of doing things together, instead of arelationship in which the child has to compete unequally with the adult.Fathers, for instance, may be of great help to their sons. Boys are aptto feel that their fathers are too big, too powerful, and too skillful;but if the father will base the relationship on some interest orexperience common to them both, the boy has an opportunity to grow ininitiative and to develop his capacities without a sense of unequalcompetition.

The answer to the child’s questions. Who am I? and Who are you?, willthen be: I am what I conceive myself to be, and you are what I conceiveyou to be according to my understanding of how you have revealedyourself. At this particular time in the development of the individual,there begin to be formed the powerful images of ourselves and othersthat aid or hinder our relationship with one another.

_Sense of Industry_

A fourth objective of love is to help the individual to a sense ofindustry, for the child has now become a busy little person who needs tolearn how to be busy with things and persons. A child’s “busyness”

the dry season. The snakehead, therefore, has similarly accommodatedhimself to this annual peculiarity in his local habitation by acquiringa special chamber for retaining water to moisten his gills throughouthis long deprivation of that prime necessary. He lives composedly insemi-fluid mud, or lies torpid in the hard baked clay at the bottom ofthe dry tank from which all the water has utterly evaporated in thedrought of summer. As long as the mud remains soft enough to allow thefish to rise slowly through it, they come to the surface every now andthen to take in a good hearty gulp of air, exactly as gold fish do inEngland when confined with thoughtless or ignorant cruelty in a glassglobe too small to provide sufficient oxygen for their respiration. Butwhen the mud hardens entirely they hibernate or rather aestivate, in adormant condition, until the bursting of the monsoon fills the pondsonce more with the welcome water. Even in the perfectly dry state,however, they probably manage to get a little air every now and againthrough the numerous chinks and fissures in the sun-baked mud. Our Aryanbrother then goes a-fishing playfully with a spade and bucket, and digsthe snakehead in this mean fashion out of his comfortable lair, with anultimate view to the manufacture of pillau. In Burmah, indeed, while themud is still soft, the ingenious Burmese catch the helpless creatures bya still meaner and more unsportsmanlike device. They spread a largecloth over the slimy ooze where the snakeheads lie buried, and so cutoff entirely for the moment their supply of oxygen. The poor fish,half-asphyxiated by this unkind treatment, come up gasping to thesurface under the cloth in search of fresh air, and are then easilycaught with the hand and tossed into baskets by the degenerateBuddhists.

Old Anglo-Indians even say that some of these mud haunting Orientalfish will survive for many years in a state of suspended animation, andthat when ponds or jhils which are known to have been dry for severalsuccessive seasons are suddenly filled by heavy rains, they are found tobe swarming at once with full-grown snakeheads released in a moment fromwhat I may venture to call their living tomb in the hardened bottom.Whether such statements are absolutely true or not the present deponentwould be loth to decide dogmatically; but, if we were implicitly toswallow everything that the old Anglo-Indian in his simplicity assuresus he has seen–well, the clergy would have no further cause any longerto deplore the growing scepticism and unbelief of these latterunfaithful ages.

This habit of lying in the mud and there becoming torpid may be lookedupon as a natural alternative to the habit of migrating across country,when your pond dries up, in search of larger and more permanent sheetsof water. Some fish solve the problem how to get through the dry seasonin one of these two alternative fashions and some in the other. In flatcountries where small ponds and tanks alone exist, the burying plan isalmost universal; in plains traversed by large rivers or containingconsiderable scattered lakes, the migratory system finds greater favourwith the piscine population.

begins with his play. Children play separately at first. In theiryoungest years, they may sit apart in the same room, each playing withhis own things, and each oblivious of the other except when one maydiscover that the other has something he wants. Later, as they grow andmature, there begins what we call parallel play. They play along side ofeach other. Now they are aware of each other, and each keeps an eye onhis playmate. Their separate playing seems to have an influence on theother in that they imitate each other. Then, at a still later stage,they begin to play together. The high point of this achievement, stilllater, is team play, which begins in adolescence or even earlier.

Now begins the capacity for directed fellowship. The fellowship of ateam is to be respected. Membership on the team may mean more to the boythan membership in his church, and this may cause ministers, parents,and teachers considerable anxiety. Instead, they should relax and beglad for the youngster’s experience, because team play is providing himwith an experience of relationship that later will become the basis forhis understanding of the ultimate meaning of all relationships. Theyshould accept the youngster’s experience and use it creatively, to helphim understand the nature of the church, our relationship as brothers,and the “captaincy” of Christ.

In team play, also, we see the occurrence of something that is very mucha part of Christian character. In order for there to be team play, it isnecessary for every member of the team to die to the desire in him tobe the whole show. A mature team member has learned that his strengthand skills depend on the strength and skills of others. This is thetheology of the playground. What has been learned in play may betranslated into work. Then, since a man’s work is one of the greatspheres in which he may exercise his ministry as a representative ofChrist, the learning of this profound lesson in the process of play isan important part of his religious education. And it can be religious,even though it may not be learned in the formal church.

The transition from play to work takes place gradually. Children becomedissatisfied with play and make-believe, and have a growing need to beuseful, to make things well, and, therefore, to acquire a sense ofindustry. They also learn to win recognition by producing things.Through play they advance to new stages of real mastery in the use oftoys and things, and learn to master experience by meditation,experimenting, and planning. The home, the school, and the church shouldtry to help them to make this transition easily in order that they maydevelop this sense of industry without a sense of inadequacy. If theyare pushed too strenuously to produce, a sense of inadequacy may result,especially when they still want to be cuddled and cared for. Family lifehas the responsibility of preparing the youngsters for school, where, inthe context of their play experiences, they accept the disciplines ofwork. Relaxed teachers are needed who understand the process by whichchildren learn to move from play to work, and who can encourage them tomake this transition without either sparing them the needed disciplines

One tropical species which adopts the tactics of hiding itself in thehard clay, the African mud-fish, is specially interesting to us humanbeings on two accounts–first, because, unlike almost all other kinds offish, it possesses lungs as well as gills; and, secondly, because itforms an intermediate link between the true fish and the frogs oramphibians, and therefore stands in all probability in the direct lineof human descent, being the living representative of one among our ownremote and early ancestors. Scientific interest and filial piety oughtalike to secure our attention for the African mud-fish. It lives itsamphibious life among the rice-fields on the Nile, the Zambesi, and theGambia, and is so greatly given to a terrestrial existence that itsswim-bladder has become porous and cellular, so as to be modified into apair of true and serviceable lungs. In fact, the lungs themselves in allthe higher animals are merely the swim-bladders of fish, slightlyaltered so as to perform a new but closely allied office. The mud-fishis common enough in all the larger English aquariums, owing to aconvenient habit in which it indulges, and which permits it to bereadily conveyed to all parts of the globe on the same principle as thevans for furniture. When the dry season comes on and the rice-fields arereduced to banks of baking mud, the mud-fish retire to the bottom oftheir pools, where they form for themselves a sort of cocoon of hardenedclay, lined with mucus, and with a hole at each end to admit the air;and in this snug retreat they remain torpid till the return of wetweather. As the fish usually reach a length of three or four feet, thecocoons are of course by no means easy to transport entire. Neverthelessthe natives manage to dig them up whole, fish and all; and if thecapsules are not broken, the unconscious inmates can be sent across bysteamer to Europe with perfect safety. Their astonishment when theyfinally wake up after their long slumber, and find themselves inspectingthe British public, as introduced to them by Mr. Farini, through a sheetof plate-glass, must be profound and interesting.

In England itself, on the other hand, we have at least one kind of fishwhich exemplifies the opposite or migratory solution of the dry pondproblem, and that is our familiar friend the common eel. The ways ofeels are indeed mysterious, for nobody has ever yet succeeded indiscovering where, when, or how they manage to spawn; nobody has everyet seen an eel’s egg, or caught a female eel in the spawning condition,or even observed a really adult male or female specimen of perfectdevelopment. All the eels ever found in fresh water are immature andundeveloped creatures. But eels do certainly spawn somewhere or other inthe deep sea, and every year, in the course of the summer, flocks ofyoung ones, known as elvers, ascend the rivers in enormous quantities,like a vast army under numberless leaders. At each tributary oraffluent, be it river, brook, stream, or ditch, a proportionatedetachment of the main body is given off to explore the variousbranches, while the central force wriggles its way up the chief channel,regardless of obstacles, with undiminished vigour. When the young elverscome to a weir, a wall, a floodgate, or a lasher, they simply squirm

christenings, and all together,?that when he was going up the pulpitstairs on Sunday evening, he was obliged to hold on by the rails, or hewould certainly have fallen over into his own pew. Mr. Sliverstone, whohas been listening and smiling meekly, says, ?Not quite so bad as that,not quite so bad!? he admits though, on cross-examination, that he /was/very near falling upon the verger who was following him up to bolt thedoor; but adds, that it was his duty as a Christian to fall upon him, ifneed were, and that he, Mr. Sliverstone, and (possibly the verger too)ought to glory in it.

This sentiment communicates new impulse to Mrs. Sliverstone, wholaunches into new praises of Mr. Sliverstone?s worth and excellence, towhich he listens in the same meek silence, save when he puts in a wordof self-denial relative to some question of fact, as??Not seventy-twochristenings that week, my dear. Only seventy-one, only seventy-one.?At length his lady has quite concluded, and then he says, Why should herepine, why should he give way, why should he suffer his heart to sinkwithin him? Is it he alone who toils and suffers? What has she gonethrough, he should like to know? What does she go through every day forhim and for society?

With such an exordium Mr. Sliverstone launches out into glowing praisesof the conduct of Mrs. Sliverstone in the production of eight youngchildren, and the subsequent rearing and fostering of the same; and thusthe husband magnifies the wife, and the wife the husband.

This would be well enough if Mr. and Mrs. Sliverstone kept it tothemselves, or even to themselves and a friend or two; but they do not.The more hearers they have, the more egotistical the couple become, andthe more anxious they are to make believers in their merits. Perhapsthis is the worst kind of egotism. It has not even the poor excuse ofbeing spontaneous, but is the result of a deliberate system and maliceaforethought. Mere empty-headed conceit excites our pity, butostentatious hypocrisy awakens our disgust.

THE COUPLE WHO CODDLE THEMSELVES

Mrs. Merrywinkle?s maiden name was Chopper. She was the only child ofMr. and Mrs. Chopper. Her father died when she was, as the play-booksexpress it, ?yet an infant;? and so old Mrs. Chopper, when her daughtermarried, made the house of her son-in-law her home from that timehenceforth, and set up her staff of rest with Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle.

Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle are a couple who coddle themselves; and thevenerable Mrs. Chopper is an aider and abettor in the same.

or imposing them too strenuously. Here we see an area in which the roleof the family and the role of the school are complementary.

The acquisition of a sense of industry is a decisive step in learning todo things with others and alongside others. This will become a majorsource of satisfaction and the area of his greatest service.

_Sense of Identity_

A fifth objective of love is to nurture in the human being a sense ofidentity which is acquired and consolidated in a new way duringadolescence. Dr. Erikson describes identity as the “accrued confidencethat one’s ability to maintain inner sameness and continuity is matchedby the sameness and continuity of one’s meaning for others.”[20]

As an individual develops and acquires skills, he thinks of himself asone who can do things, and his important people may hold a variety ofexpectations of him: “He’s clumsy,” “He never can do anything right”;or, “I can always count on him,” “He’s got the right stuff in him.” Outof his achievements and the attitudes of others toward him, his sense ofself-esteem and prestige is built, little by little. As crisis aftercrisis is passed and the individual meets each of them with reasonableresourcefulness and receives the encouragement and recognition ofothers, he begins to believe in himself, to have a consistentexpectation of what he will do in the face of various circumstances andrelationships. In this way he begins to acquire a style of living whichis his own and which contributes to his sense of identity and to others’identification of him.

In the achievement of a sense of self-identity, the child needs modelswith which to identify himself. Especially is this true during hisadolescence. He needs association with men who are clear about beingmen, and women who are clear about being women, and who are capable ofand practice a reasonably wholesome relationship with each other. Heneeds men and women who have convictions, who can distinguish betweenright and wrong, who hold these convictions firmly, and yet not rigidly.He needs guides and counselors who can help him bring together andconcentrate his various and fluctuating drives and interests, and whoare not dismayed or misled by the inconsistencies and fluctuations thatmay accompany his development. He needs help in choosing a job, becauseself-identification is dependent upon some kind of occupationalidentity. Finally, he needs help in acquiring, as a part of his sense ofself-identity, a sense of vocation, of being called to something that isgreater than himself, which will draw him forth as a participant in thedeepest meaning of life. The providing of this kind of relationship tohelp the individual acquire an indispensable sense of identity isanother of love’s objectives.

Unfortunately, however, in our complex and technical society, the models

their way up the perpendicular barrier with indescribable wrigglings, asif they were wholly unacquainted, physically as well as mentally, withNewton’s magnificent discovery of gravitation. Nothing stops them; theygo wherever water is to be found; and though millions perish hopelesslyin the attempt, millions more survive in the end to attain their goal inthe upper reaches. They even seem to scent ponds or lakes mysteriously,at a distance, and will strike boldly straight across country, to sheetsof water wholly cut off from communication with the river which formstheir chief highway.

The full-grown eels are also given to journeying across country in amore sober, sedate, and dignified manner, as becomes fish which havefully arrived at years, or rather months, of discretion. When the pondsin which they live dry up in summer, they make in a bee-line for thenearest sheet of fresh water, whose direction and distance they appearto know intuitively, through some strange instinctive geographicalfaculty. On their way across country, they do not despise the succulentrat, whom they swallow whole when caught with great gusto. To keep theirgills wet during these excursions, eels have the power of distending theskin on each side of the neck, just below the head, so as to form a bigpouch or swelling. This pouch they fill with water, to carry a goodsupply along with them, until they reach the ponds for which they aremaking. It is the pouch alone that enables eels to live so long out ofwater under all circumstances, and so incidentally exposes them to thedisagreeable experience of getting skinned alive, which it is to befeared still forms the fate of most of those that fall into the clutchesof the human species.

A far more singular walking fish than any of these is the odd creaturethat rejoices (unfortunately) in the very classical surname ofPeriophthalmus, which is, being interpreted, Stare-about. (If he had arecognised English name of his own, I would gladly give it; but as hehasn’t, and as it is clearly necessary to call him something, I fear wemust stick to the somewhat alarming scientific nomenclature.)Periophthalmus, then, is an odd fish of the tropical Pacific shores,with a pair of very distinct forelegs (theoretically described asmodified pectoral fins), and with two goggle eyes, which he can protrudeat pleasure right outside the sockets, so as to look in whateverdirection he chooses, without even taking the trouble to turn his headto left or right, backward or forward. At ebb tide this singularperipatetic goby literally walks straight out of the water, andpromenades the bare beach erect on two legs, in search of small crabsand other stray marine animals left behind by the receding waters. Ifyou try to catch him, he hops away briskly much like a frog, and staresback at you grimly over his left shoulder, with his squinting optics.So completely adapted is he for this amphibious long-shore existence,that his big eyes, unlike those of most other fish, are formed forseeing in the air as well as in the water. Nothing can be more ludicrousthan to watch him suddenly thrusting these very movable orbs right outof their sockets like a pair of telescopes, and twisting them round in

after which the youngsters may now pattern themselves are not as clearas they might be. People are having to undergo tremendous adjustments ina time of rapid technical growth, as a result of which their image ofthe world in which they live is changing; producing, therefore,uncertainties in themselves, and making it more difficult foradolescents. Our changing age creates many difficulties for changingadolescents. Cultural conditions often force young people to bandtogether in groups or movements that provide them with a point of focusby means of which they stereotype themselves and their ideals. This isone way in which they acquire stability and a sense of direction. Weneed, however, to be tolerant of this and to recognize its purpose; weneed to realize also that if we provide them with alternatives, theirneed for these stereotypes may disappear.

The church has a special role here. Most of the committee whosediscussion we read in Chapter I, gave no evidence of being able toprovide young people with the kind of models they need, for there wasnothing heroic, clear-cut, or creative about them. Their faith wasdefensive, and it did not deal with the realities of life. Young peopleturn away from that kind of “religion.” And quite rightly. They need menand women whose religion, instead of being a defense against life,provides them with the courage to move into life and become a part ofit, to accept its problems and wrestle honestly for its meanings; whosestyle of Christian living is not compulsive, but liberated; notpretentious, but honest; whose reverence for God is not confined to thesanctuary, but is exhibited in responsible relations with people. Theyneed models who, because of their religious faith, are able to admitwhen they are wrong and can ask for forgiveness without feeling a lossof personal dignity. They need religious teachers who can portray, bothby word and by example, the great personalities of the tradition, theheroes and saints; teachers who are clear about what their contributionreally is, who can make clear to youth the heroism of a man of faith andlet it stand forth without all the confusions of superstitiousveneration. They need a church and religious teachers and members thathave a sense of mission, a reason and purpose for living that is relatedto all the exciting meanings of human life, instead of being concernedwith such irrelevancies as churchism, parochialism, institutionalism,and other modern idols. In the context of this kind of example,adolescents, even in complex, modern, industrial America with all itsconfused values, will have the aid they need in order to move throughthe intricacies of their development and emerge with a sense of personalidentity and a capacity for relationship.

_Sense of Integrity_

A final objective of love is to help the individual, who by now hasbecome an adolescent and is fast approaching the threshold of adultlife, to achieve a sense of integrity. The acquisition of the senses oftrust, autonomy, initiative, industry, and identity through the years of