r children and ourselves, for example, we should like to know
the kind of address and response we should make that would call them
forth as persons who will be responsible and helpful in relation to
their dependents, peers, and superiors; and enable us, through them, to
love and serve God. How can we so participate with them in living that
there will be called forth in them a courage that will dare the risks of
creativity and acquire the freedom to love?

The dialogue between the individual and life is initiated by the basic
question that is implicit in our being, and becomes explicit as our
capacities as persons increase. The basic question is: Who am I?, and
associated with it is its partner question: Who are you? These two
questions have to be asked together almost as if they were one question,
because there is no answer to the question: Who am I?, except as there
is an answer to the question: Who are you? And this twofold question is
not only asked implicitly by the newborn baby, but explicitly by his
parents, whose own dialogue with the baby involves asking and receiving
answers to Who are you? and Who am I? because the relationship is one in
which the child also may call forth the parent as a person.

This basic twofold question is one which we all continue to ask all
through our lives in many different ways. We must not associate
question-asking exclusively with verbalization. Obviously, the baby
cannot ask his mother in words who she is. He does it by his actions, by
his random movements, by his crying, by his protests, by his exploring
hands and eyes, by his mouth. And the mother does not give reply to his
question by word only, but by her actions; by her feeding and care of
him, by her neglect, by her joy in him and her irritation because of
him, by her coming to him and by her unexplained departures from him.
All her actions are a language by which she tells her child who she is
in response to the questions implicit in his actions. And her answer to
him as to who she is gives him the beginning of an answer to his
question as to who he is.

Thus, the dialogue between mother and child, which is largely nonverbal,
tells him that his mother is one who in some ways loves him and in
others does not, and tells him also that he is one who in some ways is
loved and in other ways is not. Out of this interchange emerges his
manner of response which may become his style of living and loving. But
we need to remember tha