In my family, backbones and upper lips come made of steel. My children are no exception. Before the age of one year, my two eldest children decided to wean themselves, cold-turkey. They probably figured that their mother wouldn't be able to handle the pain of such a denial herself. Maybe they knew that as soon as I saw in their faces any sign of fear's lonely, impotent ache, an unstoppable flood of milk and love would pour out from me to cover their anxious whimpers. So they would look deep into my eyes, brokenhearted, but they would not drink.
When we greedily suck life from the material things of this world, and when we lie back, bellies taut, yet shaking in anxiety over our next meal, God, like a mother, can't help but pour out love upon our fearful cries. I wonder, if, though, to grow, we too need to find ways to wean our souls .... not from God's love, but from our souls' newborn dependency upon all that is not God. Psalm 131 is a simple and unpretentious psalm, the only psalm in the Bible that some scholars believe to have been written by a woman. In the original Hebrew, verse 3 reads: "But I still my soul and make it quiet. My soul is silent like a weaned one upon his mother, like a weaned one upon me is my soul." For the author of Psalm 131, the emotional turmoil of weaning has given way to calm hope, as her soul rests within her, now freed from the worries that come with instant gratification. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expects us to grow, to stretch ourselves, to seek our life and our nourishment in God's Kingdom. Jesus does not promise us that we can nurse like newborn babies forever. We must grow, like a child who is weaned, working to find for our full-bellied souls a kind of hiccuping peace in God's ever-loving arms.
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