Every so often I borrow from the Henri Nouwen daily or weekly reflection as I do now! The reflection has a strange kind of link to this weeks thefridayservice story (Jacob and Esau):
"Melanie Klein, a German psychoanalyst who wrote in the mid-twentieth century, talks about gratitude as a hallmark of healthy human development. The infant, Klein believes, struggles with conflicting responses to her environment, mostly represented by the mother. The child experiences intense love, aggression (manifested in biting the breast) and even envy. How could a baby feel envy? In Klein's view, the baby envies the mother's seemingly endless supply of milk and wishes it, too, could be the source of such goodness. In healthy development, the baby comes to experience that the mother it envies and the mother it loves are the same person. The natural response to this realization is gratitude, and this gratitude is the baby's reparation for the biting and envious feelings.
Isn't this a wonderful metaphor for the way human beings relate to God? We receive our very life from God, but it is only over a long journey of spiritual development that we can grow into true gratitude. Do we envy God? Maybe it's hard to admit, but I think most of us do. After all, don't we feel on some level that we are the creators and centers of our little universes? And don't we wish that others would pay us homage, at least a little? We certainly struggle with envying the gifts given to others. In these ways, and by taking for granted the gifts that we have been given, we bite the breast of God.
Along the way to spiritual maturity, we begin to encounter the reality that we are not the source of all goodness, that bad things happen, and that life is a gift. Once we realize the God we "used" is also the God we love, we want to "make reparation" - this is the Christian notion of repentance. We turn, as Klein says, from envy to gratitude. We spend less time coveting the goods of others and appreciate the wonder of life just as it is, a gift from God. This gratitude is not diminished by sorrow or trouble or fear. This is a gratitude that survives all the "empty breast" moments of our lives, because we know that our God is the Spirit of life itself, a Spirit that can never be extinguished. Then we can say from the heart, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
- LISA CATALDO, M.Div., Ph.D. is a teacher of Psychology and Religion courses at Union Theological Seminary and several psychoanalytic Institutes, and leads retreats and spirituality workshops for churches and schools. She is has a private psychotherapy practice in New York City.
Comments