Dear Friends,
As you read this letter I am in Africa. In Sierra Leone I am meeting with Cami and Faye and the Sierra Leonean servant team. In Zambia we are looking into the possibility of initiating a partnership in community there. In South Africa we are exploring the possibility of establishing a community in Cape Town. Please keep us in your prayers. Pray for health, travel mercies, wisdom, insight and guidance from God. Also pray for Lenuta who is not with me, but who is working on her thesis in order to finish her degree in psychology. And pray for the community in Galati. We are hoping to buy property so as to start the job creation project.
Thank you for you love and support,
David and Lenutsa
Attachment Therapy and Relating to God
To the surprise of many, our main focus at the “Valley” Community Center is not education, although we do a lot of this, but rather behavior modification and character development. Most of the children come to the Center with major behavior problems caused by an “attachment disorder.” Because of neglect, abuse, separation from parents, or the lack of set boundaries, the children have not attached to their primary caregiver. There are a number of signs for attachment disorder: phony behavior around strangers, manipulation, avoidance of eye contact unless they are lying, indiscriminately affectionate with strangers, lacking the ability to feel real and caring, extreme control problems, destroying things, pets, and even their own body, impulsiveness, learning disorders, abnormal eating patterns, rage, among others (for a complete list, see Nancy Thomas' When Love Is Not Enough, pp. 19-21). I know what you're thinking: “Many of these things are true of me. I must have an attachment disorder.” While that may be true, I mean I really don't know you, one must have a majority of the symptoms to be considered to have a disorder. We respond to this disorder by cultivating a bond between the children and the parents. Working with the parents, we establish respect, set limits and consequences, teach self-control, require eye-contact, and give sweets. It is always amazing to see marked change in each child within days and weeks of the therapy.
Although we have thought about attachment therapy in terms of psychological and social development, we have discovered more profound meaning when we look at attachment in theological perspective. In his book The Logic of the Spirit, James Loder has helped us reflect theologically on attachment and to ground our method in God. A psychiatrist and theologian, Loder says that all human individuals (egos) develop in a context of attachment turbulence. He points out that a newborn understands herself as one with her environment. That is why a baby puts everything in his mouth; he is injesting his eternal environment, making it a part of himself. But the child hears “no.” Also at this stage of infancy, if a drawn face that is moved up and down in front of an infant, she will smile back. This signifies a cosmic ordering – God has placed something in human beings to respond to one another through a smiling face. The Face is the primal prototype of religious experience. However, at around 6 months of age, the child becomes aware that the face is not constantly present. (Interestingly, the word “presence” in many languages, is also the word for “face”.) Or sometimes the wrong face shows up. The child reacts by crying.
Moreover, it is also at 6 months of age when the child is learning to respond to the external “no.” This negation from the primary caregiver and the anticipated absence of her/his face causes trauma for the child. At around 14 months of age, the child begins to initiate his/her own “no” as a basis for controlling their environment and relationships. We all have heard the “no” of the terrible twos, but we haven't always realized that the “no” isn't just a response but an initiating action of the child on her/his environment. Loder calls this negation “a spiritual move of existential proportions.” Whereas the child understood himself as one with his mother (or primary caregiver), he now learns how to keep inside inside and outside outside and so begins the creation of culture and the objective world.
For many of the children at our Center, the anxiety and separation actually led to disorder that needs to be remedied. But for every individual, identity is formed in loneliness (the lack of constant presence) and negation (I against the cosmos). Thus, there remains a cosmic loneliness that longs for the constant Face and a fundamental affirmation of our beings, which results in a lifelong quest for fulfilled attachment with our primary Caregiver.
Scripture tells us that the Face in whose Presence each person was created is the Face that constantly seeks us (Luke 19:10). In His incarnation, the Son has shown us the Face of God. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18:
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit…For it is God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
The Face that finds us and liberates us is also the primal force that fundamentally affirms the formation of individuals (ego). The Father's “yes” to humanity is in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). The affirmation is also the negation of all that negates humanity. Jesus becomes the curse, sin, marginalized, disfigured and dead. He bears all in order to negate its dehumanizing power. In Jesus Christ our identities are reconfigured. We hear the words that the Face will never leave or abandon us (Hebrews 13:5). Instead of identifying ourselves in opposition to others and to environment (negation), the Son identifies us in relationship (affirmation). By responding to His Face and being indwelt with His Spirit, the Triune God becomes our primary attachment. Where we were aware of our constant loneliness, we have found His Presence before whom we live and the Face to whom we belong and correspond.
This is especially promising for those with attachment disorders. When we require eye contact, smiling faces, and a polite voice tone of both the children and the community, we seek to instill and reflect the primal Face who created us in His image and who is our ultimate Caregiver. When we set strict limits for the children (an essential negation), we enable them to establish their identities (ego) in safe separation from their environment and correct their misguided “no's” to their environment. While our methods have helped many children form healthy relationships with their parents and then with others, some of the children are born into families so broken that healthy attachment seems impossible. Sadly, a person cannot form healthy relationships until he/she has formed a healthy attachment with a primary caregiver. But the personal Triune God says that He will be the primary attachment and heal and restore broken attachments. So, introducing the children to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through His Spirit, they are not simply saved-souls but their identities are healed and reshaped after the image of Christ.
As a Christian community we come together as a sign that our cosmic loneliness has found the constant presence of the Face. While all human beings are misdirected in their relationships, we find guidance in the Spirit through establishing a primary relationship with our Author and Creator. Living in the Presence of God, we as human beings are re-made and conf
ormed to the image of Christ. As a Christian community, we invite people into the Spirit of God to hear the affirmation of the Father, and we incarnate a “face” of consistency, commitment, love, limits, and strength, thus serving the healing attachments to primary caregivers and, ultimately, to the Face of God.