Hand in Hand – Sunday, February 02, 1997
The tight grip of every newborn’s hand is a tangible reminder of our need for each other. Physicians may call this the “grasp reflect,” but mothers and fathers know it as a baby’s tender clutch – the instinctive ability of a newborn to grab hold of a finger. The implications of this spontaneous grip are far reaching; we are born with the ability, even the need, to hold on to each other. Hand in hand we make our way through infancy and childhood; hand in hand we must make our way through life.
Alexander Pope put it this way:
God
………………………
On mutual Wants built mutual Happiness;
So from the first, Eternal Order ran,
And Creature link’d to Creature, Man to Man.1
Without question, we are linked as human beings. Only together can we achieve a mutual happiness.
As adults, however, we may find it difficult to balance this need for one another, this desire to “get together,” with the need to “get away.” Sometimes we long for visits, and other times for vacations. Sometimes we benefit from the society of loved ones, and other times from seclusion. And rightly so.
Our inherent need for connectedness is no less vital than our drive for independence. Both are components of good mental and emotional health.
The challenge is discerning when privacy degenerates into selfishness or, conversely, when too much socializing keeps us from moments of quiet reflection and the inner strength born of solitude. For true and lasting relationships of love rest on such an equilibrium. They are built on foundations of mutual respect, unconditional love, and unfettered choice – for the individual and for the group.
While we can manipulate a newborn’s finger around our own and glory in the humanity of that clutch, we cannot – and must not – manipulate that hand later in life. What a blessing to know that when our loved ones extend their hands as adults, they no longer do so as a reflex but as a generous, even thoughtful response to the love they feel. Just as we loved the Lord “because he first loved us,”2 our hearts will be turned to one another as we reach out with love.
1 Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man,” lines 110 to 115, 18th Century English Literature, edited by Geoffrey Tillotson, et al. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), p. 644.
2 New Testament, John 4:19
February 02, 1997
Broadcast Number 3,520