What is a Family?
Sermon by Steve Edington
May 13, 2007
Some years ago the social and political commentator, Barbara Ehernreich, wrote a rather provocative essay on families for Time magazine, which I think hit it pretty well when it comes to the often highly conflicted attitudes we as a culture and society take towards the family at present. I'll share a bit of it here to get us launched on the subject today:
"Theoretically, and (often) actually, the family nurtures warm, loving feelings...Within the family, and often only within the family individuals are loved 'for themselves,' whether they are infirm, incontinent, infantile or eccentric...At best the family teaches the finest things human beings can learn from one another - generosity and love. But it can also be where we learn nasty things like hate and rage and shame...Americans act out their ambivalence about the family without ever owning up to it. Millions adhere to creeds that are militantly 'pro-family.' But at the same time millions flock to therapy groups that offer to heal the 'inner child' from damage inflicted by family life...we are all, it is often said, 'in recovery.' And from what? Our families in many cases."
It was some 15 years ago that Ms. Ehrenreich penned those words, but they have much of the same ring to them now as they did when they were first written. They also point to the kind of mine field a well meaning minister like myself (most of the time) steps into in taking up a topic like the meaning of family - especially on Mothers' Day. Knowing what I do of the many life stories and pathways that have brought many of you here lets me know as well that invoking such a topic as family calls forth a wide range of thoughts, emotions, and memories which are reflective of what Ms. Ehrenreich herself observes.
Actually the family ambivalence addressed here is something I've often seen in the weddings and funerals I've conducted. Both occasions have a way of bringing up family matters. In the great majority of cases they have in fact been good and happy family matters. The celebratory and festive mood at a wedding usually includes a joyful celebration of the families that are also coming together - and a reaffirmation of each of the couple's family ties. At a funeral or memorial service, even as the passing of a life is mourned, there is, again, often a deeply appreciative acknowledgement of the family and the enduring family ties of the deceased.
That's the case in most cases. I've also found myself dealing on occasion, in both settings, with situations where certain family members do not wish to be seated near, or even speak with, other family members. That can get a little, or more than a little, dicey at times. It all points up to me what a precious, and yet fragile, institution the family can be: Precious when it comes to providing us the some the basic things we need for our emotional, psychological, mental and spiritual health and well-being; and fragile in terms of how easily it can be hurt or shattered.
Well, I posed my sermon title for today in the form of a question: What Is a Family? If for no other reason than for the sake of truth in advertising, I think I should try to answer it. I have become convinced, in my dealings with families over the years, that what primarily defines a family is much more a matter of function than it is one of form. By that I mean that a family is best understood in terms of what it does, much more so than who happens to make it up. And when it comes to function, I think some of the language, some of the words, that we used in our Dedication and Naming Ceremony earlier in this service say it as well as any:
"Each human life is bound with others, and this is especially true within the family. It is here that each person is shaped and formed by all the interactions of affection, of act, and of word. In the relationships of family we receive our sense of worth and personhood, our sense of what is right and wrong, our feeling of who we are, and what our unique place in this world is."
That's a pretty good summation, I feel, of what a healthy family does. And you can have any number of configurations, any number of combinations of human beings I mean, who can do that. It does not need to be one particular structure or form to be held up above all others. I'll come back to this point in a few minutes.
Right now I want to spend just a couple more minutes on these Dedication Ceremony words, because when you think about it, they ask one heck of a lot of a very human and often fragile institution: To shape and form a person by all the interactions of affection, act, and word. To be the place where one receives his or her sense of right and wrong,
their feelings of who they are and what their unique place in the world is. This is what we expect of our families, in addition to their providing the more material needs of life. And when you think about it, it's not only children towards which such expectations are directed. Even for adults the family remains that basic unit where we look for acceptance, support, respect and trust.
We all need that place where we are accepted unconditionally; just as we are. It's like the definition of "home" that Robert Frost offers in his well known poem Death of the Hired Man: "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." In this poem the hired man, Silas, has come back to live with Warren and Mary - with whom he has no blood ties at all. But it's the home, the family if you will, to which Silas returns and they welcome him home; which, as the poem plays itself out, is the home where he dies.
Another role of the family is that it serves as the place, the launching pad, from which we push off to pursue our own lives. Consider these words by Peter Collier in a book called Traits of a Healthy Family: "Your family is what you've got...It is your limits and your possibilities. Sometimes you'll get so far away from it you'll think you're outside its influence forever, then before you figure out what's happening, it will be right beside you...Some people get crushed by their families. Others are saved by them." These words echo those of Ms. Ehrenreich's: Some families bless and nurture us - others leave us needing to recover from them.
Crushed, saved, or some of both, Mr. Collier makes the wise point that your family of origin is something you never completely walk away from. This gets me to the point I just mentioned. Your family of origin - however constituted, however weak or strong, functional or dysfunctional - is the basic social unit against which, or in the face of which, we define ourselves and take responsibility for our lives.
I'll speak to this in a personal way. I grew up in a family where, whatever its imperfections and shortcomings, the positives far outweighed the negatives; and where I felt more saved than crushed. But there also came a time when I had to push off from it. I had to say "no" to certain aspects of my family, loving as it was, in order to become the person I was striving to be. I had to make certain value choices, belief choices, and life style choices that were not altogether consistent with the ones my parents worked so hard and so lovingly, to instill in me. I had to disconnect, that is to say, at one point, so I could come back a re-connect at another. So, drawing on that experience, I would say that yet another role of the family to provide young persons who are coming of age, a place to push off from. That pushing off is not always painless or anxiety free, but it still has to happen; and in a healthy family that dis-connecting as a child and re-connecting as an adult usually comes off OK.
Alright, to sum up so far: Families are very human and oftentimes fragile institutions. We invest a great deal of need and hope and expectation in them. In many ways those needs, hopes, and expectations get fulfilled; maybe not 100% but usually close enough. However fragile they may be, families are also pretty resilient - resilient enough to survive many of our human failings; not all of them, unfortunately, but many of them. And more often than not, those who were victims of those failings are still able to create and sustain healthy and secure families of their own.
To briefly, now, pick up on an earlier point about how I think it is best to understand and evaluate families on the basis of what they do, rather than how they are specifically made up: This is the major issue I have with so-called "pro family" groups and organizations like James Dobson's Focus on the Family. They seem to be so concerned, if not obsessed, with what is the "proper" family structure, much more than with what a good family does - along the lines of what I've already said. Their whole opposition to same-sex marriage or unions is predicated on the idea that because a same-sex couple does not fit the supposedly God ordained structure of what a family should be, according to what they call "Biblical Family Values" such couples therefore are destroying the American family.
As an aside here I remember a remark our UUA President, Rev. Bill Sinkford, made in an address to the delegates at one of our recent General Assemblies when he wondered out loud if Biblical Family Values included King Solomon and his 700 wives.
On a more serious note, I will readily grant the sad truth that there are indeed some very real social, economic, and cultural factors working against the stability of the family in our society today: Things like young people escaping they own unstable families by having children of their own that they are ill equipped to raise; things like working mothers struggling to make ends meet while also trying to raise their children; things like easy and seductive inducement into the drug culture. Of course there are serious threats, really serious threats, to the stability of today's family in America. But in the face of all this, to suggest - as does Dr. Dobson and his organization - that the greatest threat to the family in our country today are same-sex couples who want to be, and who want to create, families of their own is somewhere on the other side of ludicrous.
On this note I am very gratified that we have gotten to the point in our fine Granite State where same-sex civil unions will be given the weight of law. It's not the whole enchilada when it comes to full marriage equality, but it's a very significant step in that direction. I look forward to the first of January of 2008, and the days thereafter, when any same-sex union ceremony I may officiate will also be one for which I can actually sign a legal document.
To begin to close now, I believe it is a calling of people of faith - people of many faiths; and people of good will and compassion to affirm, value, and support those many varieties of family that are seeking to find positive and healthy expressions and ways of being. I believe part of our calling here is to be a welcoming and affirming religious community for the many kinds of families and individuals who have made, or who are seeking to make, this their religious and spiritual home.
Whatever families may have brought us forth, the fact is that we are all here now; coming with both the fulfillments and the frustrations those families bestowed upon us. Some of us come with family memories we love and cherish; and some with memories that are painful to recall. We should be mindful here of the many kinds of families that make up the mosaic of our congregation, and be welcoming and affirming of all of them.
I'll finish for today then by recalling once again the charge I give to families in our Child Dedication ceremony - the one given to Julie and Josh today: To be a place where we receive our sense of worth and personhood, our sense of right and wrong, our feelings of who we are and what our unique place in this world is. For we each and all carry these needs with us from the moment we embark upon life until the moment we depart from it. My wish for us as a congregation is that we will continue to find amongst ourselves new and creative ways of living out this charge so that we may each and all move to greater and deeper levels of human fulfillment.
The words of our closing hymn were written as a prayer for congregations and the structures that house them - but they words work on at least two levels. They do speak to how we as a congregation strive to live out our life as a church family, and they offer a prayer for all the many and varied families in our midst as well.
Stephen D. Edington
May 13, 2007
