The Blended Spiritual Family
By Charles Rush
August 5, 2012
Acts 2: 44-47
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(mp3, 6.0Mb) ]
once saw a fascinating documentary on the emotional life of animals. Researchers who had worked for many years with wolves, elephants, dolphins, and higher primates shared stories about how they expressed anger, joy, grief, gratitude, and even self sacrifice.
One segment featured a researcher that had been working with
a chimpanzee family for 13 years. They had taught the chimpanzee's to use sign
language and could communicate quite well with them.
Chimpanzees like routine. They expect
to see you on your regular schedule. Once the researcher missed work for quite
a few days because she had a miscarriage. She goes back to the work with the chimp's and one of them ignores her because she has been
gone. Finally the researcher gets her attention and says "My baby
died" in sign language. The chimpanzee was also a mother and the researcher
knew she would understand. The mother chimpanzee sat quietly for a good long
while and then she made the sign for crying. Looking into her eyes, it was an
extraordinary exchange, and the researcher was overcome with emotion at the
compassion. Then the mother chimpanzee signed her 'hug' and they hugged.
On another occasion they built the chimpanzees
a new home, far bigger than where they had been living for the past decade,
with a much better replication of their natural habitat. In order to prepare the
chimpanzees for this big move, they made videos of the new home with the
researchers moving all around the new environment. The chimpanzee family
watched the videos with interest.
Then came the day
of the move. It
was pretty much just like an episode of "Extreme Makeover". The chimpanzees
all wander into this fabulous new area with all kinds of new gimmicks and toys.
They don't exactly attack the place, but just wander tentatively, a little
overwhelmed by it all. The mother chimpanzee turns back and walks over to the
researchers who are all gathered watching this. She signs, "thank
you" and kisses the glass.
It is very moving to watch animals communicate their interior
emotional life. We feel a connection with them because we share that higher
spiritual faculty. Along with our rational faculty and our moral sensibility,
our internal emotional life is what really makes us "real" so much of
our life. Together these define our spiritual psyches and our spiritual psyches
differ from higher primates not so much in kind but in degree. We know that we
are blessed with a concentration of spiritual psychic consciousness and we
rightly cherish that and nurture it. And we should.
I think it is one of the genius
spiritual insights that the early Christians looked to the spiritual community
of the Church to be such a place. They saw the communal life that we share as a
principal place that we tend, nurture and extend that spiritual connectedness.
Now sometimes the actual people in the institution of the Church do this and
sometimes they don't. But I want you to think about your spiritual community
today because there is a real sense for almost all of us that the
spiritual community actually heals and extends the sense of family that we get
from our physical families.
Physical families are, of course,
very important for developing our spiritual sense of compassion, our sense of
being loved so that we can love others, our sense of place and belonging so
that we can reach out and include others. But it is true for a good number of
us that our spiritual families actually heal some wounds from our physical
families and that is often profound.
I think of someone I met once I'll
call Kyle. Kyle grew up in Texas, the oldest child in his family with a brother
and a sister. Kyle's mother died when he was a small child and he never really
had any memory of her.
His father was an itinerant worker. He was forever moving his
family around in search of work. And his interests varied wildly. He did some
oil rig work, some mechanic work, even worked at a hotel for a while. The
family never stayed in one place for any length of time and Kyle thinks he
probably attended 16 different schools in Texas, Nevada, Arizona, and Oklahoma.
He remembers lots of shotgun houses as a child. He remembers
lots of nights watching a T.V. signal that barely came in with his brother and
sister in a cheap hotel on the edge of the desert. His father was a difficult
man that couldn't get along with any of his own relatives for any length of
time but Kyle had no real idea of just how abnormal his father was. Since they
had no friends, moving as often as they did, the children were very close to
one another.
Kyle's father was emotionally
withdrawn and not very communicative one way or the other but he didn't realize
just how incommunicative until many years later. Kyle was a terrific athlete.
He had a wicked fastball. And the only time his father actually slowed down the
pace of their moves was Kyle's high school career. That is because the coach
was all over his Dad, in part because they needed Kyle's incredible arm. He won
a scholarship to college in Texas and went.
During these years, his father began
to degenerate so Kyle took in one sibling when he was a junior in college and
the other one right around his senior year. Kyle was remarkably focused in
school and did well enough to get a job in Houston in the energy business.
During those years, he became curious about his Mother. His
father had never said much of anything about his mother. After a bunch of phone
calls, he took his brother and sister to East Tennessee to meet their
grandparents. They had a box full of photos of this beautiful young woman,
pictures of Kyle as a baby. His mother had died tragically of an illness. Her
husband had brought her back home to her parents at the end of her life and
then mysteriously just disappeared shortly after she died without really saying
goodbye and he was never heard from again. Very odd.
Kyle met a woman, fell in love with
her, and she really helped him to feel safe and accept him without any
expectations… When he was in college he had a found a picture from the famous
magazine cover by Norman Rockwell of the family Thanksgiving dinner. He used to
look at that photograph all during college… and remember sleeping in the back
of a station wagon. He wanted normal so bad…
They eventually bought a nice home in
Houston and his brother and sister lived with them until they were grown. But
another thing happened to him during those years. He met an engineer that was
quite a few years older than him. This man took Kyle under his wing. When they
worked together, they had lunch from time to time. Even after he went to
another company, he would call Kyle and they would go fishing together. Kyle
didn't know it at the time, but this man was becoming a surrogate spiritual
father to him. When Kyle's kids were babies, he would drop something by on
their birthdays.
One night Kyle is at the hospital.
His daughter had been involved in a serious accident. It turns out she would be
fine but at the time, they didn't know. He is at the hospital with his wife and
this Man shows up. He gets the update from the anxious parents, excuses
himself, comes back with drinks and sits down. Kyle says, "Oh you don't
have to stay." The man looks back at him and says, "No I don't, but
Kyle, I can stay as long as it takes." Kyle just sat there overcome with
emotion- maybe that someone was there for him, maybe that someone else was
strong so he could be afraid, maybe because a father showed up when he needed
one. It is hard to say.
But in a very simple, profound way,
he experienced a lot of spiritual healing. Years later he would look back on
that night, look back on the relationship that he had with this man and realize
that he had been spiritually fathered all along… He had been adopted… He had
some needs met that he didn't even know he needed until they had been met. That
is what the spiritual family does for us. They round us out in ways that we
didn't really know that we needed but we did.
The scripture in Acts says that the
early Church shared all things in common. They had a profound life together.
Everyone had their place at the table. What a simple but important grace that
really is.
Because the reality is that even our
physical families are not in stasis. They are constantly changing and the older
we get, the truer this is. People come into our families and they take their
leave.
I'm thinking of many families in our
congregation who have adopted children and made those long, arduous- dealing
with bureaucracies in other languages to finally get to the orphanage. What a
precious spiritual grace they are extending to their daughters and sons. What a
blessing their children's lives and what a blessing their children are to them
as well.
Of course, I get to watch all of the
time as parents watch their children get married. And you get to see how they
greet their new daughter-in-law or son-in-law. That is a blend of a new sort
and how important it can really be. There is a movie out a few years ago titled
not "Mother-in-Law but "Monster-in-Law." That is a little harsh
but the relationship carries a lot of spiritual heft and we can be deeply
blessed and cursed, sometimes at the same time.
And people leave the family in
divorce sometimes but they don't entirely leave. As I try to remind people when
they are at the early stages of divorcing and prone to channeling their anger
through bitter legal struggles, or using their children… just remember, you
will have a relationship with this woman for the rest of your life. You have
graduations, weddings, the birth of grandchildren. Resist the temptation to do
anything that will undermine this reality. What an important spiritual grace it
is to be able to stay respectful even when you are deeply disappointed and in a
rage internally. How difficult it is to disengage from a marriage that is
broken while keeping some dignity and civility.
We have families that remarry and we
have to blend step children together. How difficult it is to develop those new
relationships and be a support that helps children realize their potential in
an awkward family structure. But how important it is if you find yourself in
that situation. How important it is to develop new family traditions that are
different and new and reflect the actual situation that your new family is
going through rather than simply be disappointed continually by going through
the same rituals and grieving what has been lost.
I remember a piece by Nicholas
Kristoff in the NYT on this subject. He referred to a study that indicated our
children were actually far more conservative sexually than what is depicted on
television. Kristoff speculated that this is because more of them have grown up
in homes of divorce and blended homes and they know what a challenge it is and
they don't want to go down that road. I hope he is right because it is a
difficult challenge. But if that is where you are, how important to extend
grace.
And death… Few families make to old
age in tact. Most of us know tragedy. We have life cut short. In our generation,
the cousins of my wife and mine number about 24 -- and four of them are dead,
one from a horse that fell, one from a gun shot, one
from a heart attack and one from suicide.
And those deaths change the extended
family too, spiritually speaking. Suddenly your role as an uncle, as an aunt,
takes on more gravitas. It is not only important that you show up more often,
but you have to bring more to the relationship as well. All of us have to do a
little bit of mothering whether we are any good at it or not. That is just what
needs to be done now. And it doesn't take the place, not at all… But it is just
there. That is the spiritual community… That is sharing things in common.
Your spiritual family is bigger than
your physical family and in some significant aspects, it is probably more
important. You should make a note of who is in your spiritual family tree from
time to time.
If you suddenly had something happen
to you that was extraordinarily good, so good that it
was too good to be true, who are the first 5 people that you would call that
would share your happiness without any jealousy or resentment… okay with only
manageable jealousy and resentment? Who do you reach out to when you are
blessed?
If you have something that is deeply
difficult to deal with, something that could affect your career, your
reputation depending on how you handle it… if you want to discuss something
that involves a fundamental question of integrity and who you are as a person,
who do you reach out to? Who knows you well enough and who do you trust enough
with your confidence that you can share your heart?
Who do you gravitate towards when you
don't feel safe? Who is an anchor for you, a strong Oak?
Where do you go for inspiration? Who
is it that you look to when your spirits are flagging, when cynicism is rising
in your soul? Who is it that makes you want to be more noble?
Where do you go to get lifted up towards higher sights?
Who is it that has been a healing for
you? Who gave you a vision of what it is that you would eventually grow into?
Who gave you the key that unlocked the door?
These are your spiritual people. They have nursed you and
built you up. They are cheering for you when you are not around. They will join
their prayers to yours and hope the best for you comes to bloom. These are your
people and a few of them are also related to you.
The real spiritual genius of the earliest Christians was the
recognition that we need to become part of a New Community if we have any hope
of genuinely becoming a New People. Acts tells us that when the Spirit fell
fully on those early Christians, the first thing that manifested itself was a
New Community. We are not in this alone, it is the
great group of us helping each other.
At the end of the day, that is what
is most important in our lives. It is the quality of our interior life which is
shaped by the quality of the community around us. It is about the lives that we
share together. It is about that intangible, yet profound and important,
interior spirit that we share with one another. It is my deepest hope that you
will not only find that blessing but be that blessing to someone else. And may
we all find our place at the table. Amen.
