Agape and Personhood. David L. Goicoechea

golden necklace chain with a beautiful golden cross and

      she loved it so much she could hardly wait to wear it to school.

      But one of the Mormon boys whom she admired asked her

      “What kind of charm is that?” And she felt embarrassed.

      And though the cross of the Good Shepherd was dear to her she

      wore it to school no more and though she loved and admired

      her Mormon friends she would not let them know that she

      wore it at home and she prayed for them when she took it off.

      And she began to hide many of her thoughts and to reflect on deceit.

      Her mother got along well with the Mormons and they

      admired her for she had winning and weaning ways

      as she taught mother to be open to all and offensive to none.

      And de Silentio wrote: “When the child is to be weaned, the

      mother blackens her breast. It would be hard to have the breast

      look inviting when the child must not have it. So the child

      believes that the breast has changed, but the mother—she is still

      the same, her gaze is tender and loving as ever. How fortunate

      the one who did not need more terrible means to wean the child.”

      Her father thought it was only a black sheep and she should not fret.

      The boy thought it was some evil, magical charm and she

      became weaned by loving them with acting beyond deceit.

      I.2.5 In the Third Weaning of Mutual Mourning

      Mother loved her four years at Carey High School from the time

      she was fourteen until eighteen and the Mormon atmosphere

      suited her well as it fostered a sense of vocation-mission-destiny.

      Some of her friends were already talking about going to college and

      going on a mission to teach others that our Heavenly Father loves us.

      Mother was especially impressed with the good Mormons in that

      they did not drink or smoke or swear and in fact they did not

      even drink coffee or tea and she could easily appreciate that.

      When she visited her cousins Nelson, Burl and Frieda over

      at her Uncle Chuck’s and Aunt Omas’ she loved them dearly.

      Uncle Chuck was very funny, loveable and always joking

      but sometimes he did drink a bottle of beer and go across the street

      to the pool hall where some of his friends were just a bit rowdy.

      Her father would also drink with his friends and even though

      he was a very hard working and productive man mother asked

      her mother about such activity and they both saw dark horizons.

      They went into the Great Depression that swept the country and

      even though farmers were fairly self-sufficient and they now

      had their farm the banking system was failing and the sheep business

      shut down and mother and her mother felt that an idle mind

      is the devil’s workshop and alcoholism began to make them anxious.

      And de Silentio wrote: “When the child is weaned the mother, too,

      is not without sorrow because she and the child are more and more

      to be separated, because the child who first lay under her heart

      and later rested upon her breast will never again be so close.

      So they grieve together the brief sorrow. How fortunate the one

      who kept the child so close and did not need to grieve anymore.”

      The weaning process is a kind of mourning process and the loss

      of his mother when he was only five left Levaur Coates

      with a lack of inner security that needed the boost

      of alcohol and the warm camaraderie that it deceitfully fostered.

      I.2.6 In the Fourth Weaning of Providing Sustenance

      In the last of the four scenarios Johannes de Silentio wrote:

      When the child is to be weaned the mother has stronger

      sustenance at hand so that the child does not perish.

      How fortunate the one who has this stronger sustenance at hand.

      This fourth weaning story helps us to understand the failures

      of the other three for in none of them was better food provided.

      Mother, like Abraham, grew in her faith by its often being tested.

      How else could she have come to a loving, forgiving heart toward

      her father when he was callous with black sheep bum-lambs like hers?

      How else could she forgive the boy who ridiculed her cross?

      How could she grow in love toward drinking, rowdy relatives?

      Her mother helped her to understand and discover the better food

      of loving forgiveness and thus mother was not enclosed in

      the failed mourning process of merely aesthetically blackening

      the breast or ethically of hiding the breast or in the resignation

      of a mutual mourning since better sustenance was provided.

      But the four Isaac-Abraham binding stories that parallel

      the four weaning stories show us the inadequacies of even

      the fourth weaning story for Abraham is not graceful in

      his infinite resignation which indicates that he lacks faith

      and that he will still retain Isaac and thus Isaac loses faith.

      Gramma Coates as an only child must have been well weaned

      by her mother and when her great test of being abandoned came

      she must have been graced through her father and Aunt Sadie

      so that like Abraham she could be graceful in her resignation.

      Even though Gramma Coates provided mother with understanding

      there was much more than only that food for conscious thought.

      Gramma Coates’ attitude, mood and feeling had a buoyant faith.

      After all she had been through and successfully mourned

      she could be an exemplar for mother so that when her father

      or friends or relatives looked offensive she did not take offence.

      I.2.7 Pauline Universalism—Johannine Exclusivism

      What mother experienced even though it was not articulated was

      the difference between her mother’s Episcopalian universalism and

      her father’s and the Mormon’s Beloved Community’s exclusivism.

      When the boy showed no tolerance for the cross she experienced

      a thought, word and deed that was deeply rooted in an attitude

      that was very surprising to her because it was