ionship and we know what a desperate feeling it produces. We lose
whatever sense of well-being we may have had, and we begin to feel
unwanted, depressed, and less alive. When we are warmly gathered again
into an important group, we begin to come alive. Our blood runs faster,
and we know the joy of life again. It is almost as though we had been
resurrected. The sense of being a part, the experience of fellowship,
makes the difference between life and death. I once visited in a home
where a teen-age girl was having one of her frequent "tragic" love
experiences. The boy she was currently dating had not called her up for
three days. She was full of gloom, moped around the house, and lost her
usual interest in everything. One evening the phone rang and the call
was for her. First we heard her laugh, and then she burst into the room
full of gaiety and enthusiasm. You would not have known her for the same
girl. Alone and rejected, as she thought, she was dead. Restored to
relationship, she came alive again. We may smile patronizingly at the
emotional excesses of this teen-age girl, but on the other hand we
understand deeply the fundamental meaning of her experience.

The patterns of relationship begin with our birth. We would not survive
if the whole community, centering in the basic function of the mother,
did not assume responsibility for us. Our dependence upon her for food
and care is the occasion for the beginning of relationship. And both the
infant and the mother have their part to play. She moves as a person
toward her child with the gifts of her milk and of her love. The infant,
on his side, in random and non-specific ways, calls out to her. He cries
and makes his simple movements. She responds to his cries with her care.
He responds to her care by sleeping and waking, by crying and cooing.
And thus begins the dialogical nature of relationship.

_Relationship Is Dialogue_

Relationship is dialogue. Dialogue occurs when one person addresses
another person and the other person responds. It is a two-way process in
which two or more people discuss meanings that concern them. To whatever
degree one part of the dialogue is lost, to that degree the relationship
ceases to exist. A marriage, for instance, ceases to exist, except in
form, only when either one of the partners ceases to communicate with
the other, and the quality of address and response is lost. Likewise,
true religion disappears when it represents only what G