t his characteristics as a person are not wholly
determined by the action of his environment, because they also are
determined by who he is within himself as a unique being. His
inheritance provides him a given quality and capacity. Therefore, the
dialogue is to be understood also as a dialogue between heredity and
environment in which his experience of love releases his power of being.

_Sense of Trust_

The first objective of love to be accomplished out of the dialogue
between the individual and the world is the awakening in him of a sense
of basic trust. Trust toward oneself and toward others is acquired to
some degree during the first year. I have discussed this at some length
in an earlier book, _Man's Need and God's Action_,[17] and here, as well
as there, I acknowledge my indebtedness to the work of Erik Erikson.[18]
In this chapter I shall discuss the other senses that he identifies as
necessary acquisitions of the growing personality.

Perhaps the greatest contribution to the achievement of basic trust is
through the experience of being fed. The experience of being fed
regularly and responsibly causes the child to respond with trust, and he
learns to have faith long before he knows the word for it. Later, at the
appropriate time he acquires the word "faith" to point to the meaning of
his trust experiences. If, still later, he allows the words to take the
place of the substance of his faith, they will become empty words.
Responsible parents and teachers seek to combine the right word with
their action so that the meaning of the child's experiences is
correlated with the words for them. A mature correlation between word
and experience is one in which the child has the experience of finding
people both trustworthy and untrustworthy, and has been helped to deal
with the untrustworthiness in the context of trust. His first
experience, therefore, is a realistic one in which he is strengthened by
his experiences of trust, and is not made too anxious by his experiences
of the inevitable failures of his loved ones to take care of him
perfectly.

The child's experience of trust and mistrust contains the first meanings
for his Christian education. The care of the Divine Father is expressed
in and through the care of his earthly parents. His response to the care
of his earthly parents is his response to his Divine Father. This needs
to be interpreted to the child as he grows up, so that he will accept
and believe in