Blended by Love
By Charles Rush
November 24, 2013
Galatians 3: 24-28 and I Corinthians 13: 4-8
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ve is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful out of your insecurity. Love is not arrogant; it isn't rude; Love does not always insist on doing things ‘my way' on ‘my time'. Love is not irritable or put upon or resentful when you do something nice for other people. Love doesn't rejoice when others make mistakes or turn out not to have their facts entirely straight. Love actually rejoices in even small victories when those around you show even a little bit of growth and promise. Love bears all things (especially when our loved ones are sick or dying, so maybe we could bear a little more just now); Love believes in people, even when they are shaky and not actualizing their potential. Love hopes and prays for the best, (especially for the difficult and the dysfunctional).”
As we turn
towards a Holiday weekend, two headlines caught my attention, thinking about
how our disparate families come together this time of year. The first one was
Vice-President Dick Cheney's girls. One of them, Mary, is gay and legally
married. Her sister, Liz, is running for the Senate in the very conservative
state of Wyoming. As you know, Liz, went on national
TV, pronouncing her opposition to same-sex marriage, saying that she and her
sister had ‘agreed to disagree'. She might have vetted that a bit more with her
sister because her sister's spouse and then her sister went on Facebook and
posted material attacking her sister Liz for her retrograde views.
Can't you see
the former Vice-President carving the Turkey right now.
So glad to have my girls home, even though they can't
even ‘Agree' to disagree. How many of us had those dinners just degrade into controlled combat before the pumpkin pie gets
served.
My father was
something of a political mix. He was half Dick Cheney and half Donald Rumsfeld
and my brother was is sort of mid-way between Teddy Kennedy and Che Guevara. In our twenties, before he quit drinking, he
was very fond of prodding the old man, who fell for it every single time I have
to say. No matter what the topic, it got louder and louder, more and more
heated, usually with me in the middle, and each of them goading me ‘you don't
agree with him do you?'
I remember one
time trying to say something conciliatory like ‘thank you for sharing your
position with me' but it came out ‘thank you for shouting your position at me.'
If the Redskins were losing that year, which happened a lot, I'd lean over to
Kate and whisper, ‘get the kids ready and meet me in the car.' Retreat! We
didn't know. We thought all families loved each other like this.
And the other
headline was the feature article in the Economist on ‘How Civil Wars end' that
interviewed my son's College professor. That is the title of his last seminar
in Political Science, “How Civil Wars End”, fitting
information for college graduates about to make their way in the wider world at
present. The subject was Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and
the many other hot spots around our globe. And they brought up the example of
Lebanon in the 80's and 90's. As you know, Lebanon is divided between
Christians, Shiite Muslims, and Sunni Muslims. And they tore each other apart
for over a decade. By the way, that Civil War came to an end, as most of them
come to an end, when outside countries stop funding the fighters. They run out
of money pretty quick on their own and simply can't continue the reign of
destruction and are forced to the bargaining table.
But you know
what else they found in Lebanon that was striking. It turns out that these
divisions in Lebanese society are a whole lot more complicated than you might
suspect from the outside. Once they started doing the studies on Lebanese
families, the anecdotes turned out to be true. It turns out that, yes, the
country is seriously divided between Christians, Shiites and Sunni's. But it is
also true that almost every single extended family has all three groups as part
of their clan. Once the political leaders of the country disempowered the
leaders of the militia's, then they had the same problem that we all have, the
challenge of getting our own extended families to make the peace with one
another.
How do we blend
these people together? I think it is a fitting example because it is happening
right now all across our world. And it is a very good way to understand most of
what you see in the Middle East today.
In 2002, I was
on sabbatical in North Africa with my wife, daughter and niece. We had just
left Tunis on a taxi towards a resort hotel on the Mediterranean and our driver
wanted to stop for tea in a dingy little crossroads village in the desert. We
got out of the car and I saw a girl, probably 12 years old, in one of the alley
ways. She wasn't in the burka yet, a tween, and she had on a European three
quarter sleeved shirt, so I walked up a bit to get a better view. Here were
these building, probably a couple centuries old in a society that has hardly
changed at all in the past two centuries, with tea samovars essentially
unchanged in the past thousand years poured by women with Henna tattoos,
designs over a thousand years old as well. Nothing ever changes out here in the
desert. I get closer to this girl and you know what it says on her T-shirt? Abercrombie and Fitch.
I thought to
myself at the time, this is what these Mullahs are so alarmed about. They are
losing the culture war to MTV, the world over. Burka vs.
Surfers? Young people the world over are going with the surfers, much
cooler.
10 years later,
I was probably watching her on TV, now 22, protesting as the whole country of
Tunisia had a momentary revolt against the stifling traditionalists in their
country. Now they were all taking pictures of the movement with their cell
phones, posting them on Facebook for the whole world to see. And just like
that, some kid that had been exiled to the solitude of the desert in Africa, was connected to the rest of the world and totally
transformed by this connection as well.
We know how much
our children have been changed by inner-connective technology, but young people
in these traditional societies are being changed even more. Our culture has had
500 years to go through the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the
Enlightenment. Each of them were gut wrenching changes
in the way we viewed the world and the values that we have. These societies are
having those changes over 500 years compressed into a single generation,
perhaps two. Just imagine what those extended families are going through.
We all know what
it is like when part of our families go to college and
the others don't, how differently they see the world, how differently they
value things, like Archie Bunker and his son-in-law. We know how differently it
is when your Aunt has the old traditional religious faith- for most of us here
it is Catholic- and the younger people in the family that want to be spiritual
but just can't accept the old way of thinking and the old ways of piety from
yesteryear. Multiply those frictions by several fold
in all those families across the Middle East. The Civil War is not going on
between people far away from each other, it is people
in every extended clan as well.
The challenge is
that we are all blended families now. We all have a very similar challenge of
how to get along when we are really different. I wrote an op-ed earlier this
summer for the Star Ledger supporting same sex marriage, noting that the
religious argument against it was that it would undermine the ‘traditional
family'. This is what I said, “In our extended families, there is no such
animal as a ‘traditional family'. There are only blended families. I can't
think of an extended family that doesn't have a divorce or two that complicates
the picture, or a family that doesn't have a couple who have adopted children often
from other nations.
Of the families
that attend our church, I am hard-pressed to think of one that doesn't have
interfaith or intercultural challenges. What binds them all together is their
common quest to live in meaningful, loving relationships with one another,
hopefully helping each other to thrive and find our place at the table.
Last Sunday at
coffee hour, I spoke to an Italian Catholic father who married a woman from the
Philippines when they were in medical school. They adopted twin girls from
Korea and are raising them as Protestants, largely because we are committed to
diversity, with inclusive support and acceptance.
Another father
was raised Catholic, married a half Jewish woman, had two children of their own
and adopted a third child who is African-American. So their extended family
includes Irish, Italian and Eastern European Ashkenazi wings. With their
adopted daughter, they also have a black Baptist wing.
So when I talked
to two gay fathers, one from the U.S., the other from Europe who have adopted
two bi-racial sons, it seemed to me that they have more in common with the
other blended families around them than differences. All of them are seeking to
ground their children with an identity, a place, a belonging.
All of us want
to give the next generation a set of values that can help them find their way
and negotiate the moral complexities life will surely throw at them. And all of
these children want to be accepted for who they are, with their families
helping them to develop a story of how they are uniquely appreciated for who
they are.
In my Christian
tradition, we are taught that God loves all of us and that we are all children
of God, first and foremost. Jesus taught us that the Kingdom of God is like a
wedding banquet, where we all have our place at the table.
Perhaps it was
easier for us to get sidetracked with the argument for the traditional family
back when we lived in County Cork or West Texas and were surrounded by people
like us, pretty much from the same ethnic background with the same religious
and cultural sensibilities. But we haven't been living like that for quite a
long time. And the process of blending has been much more interesting than the
quaint segregation of yesteryear, has it not?
No, we need
traditional values more than ever to genuinely blend our families with love. We
need the traditional value of gratitude for the uniqueness of each person and
generosity that reaches out to include people who are different. We will need
the traditional values of compassion to meet others where they are, and the
love that helps them bloom from within.
We need the
traditional value of reconciliation that softens the very real edges of
difference to work toward an extended family that we can all call home. We need
a vision of peace where we are all normal, blended and a work in progress.”
So this week,
when you are on the commute Wednesday, surrounded by the teeming masses in
transit to all points out of New York, and your thoughts turn toward the
extended family reunion with all of your quirky relatives and in-laws, I do
hope you will remember that almost all of them are like that.
I hope that you
will have a moment of reflection, a moment of resolve, that
you are going to be more of a thermostat setting the emotional and spiritual
temperature with those around you and less like a thermometer, simply
registering and reflecting back the spiritual and emotional mood of your
extended clan. May you radiate God's love to those around you from the center
of your being and not simply reflexively respond to oft used triggers that your
family fires at you on autopilot. May you be a beacon of grace and acceptance
beguiling your people to engage their better sides.
And may you creatively figure out a way that everyone around you can find a
place at the table that you've been privileged to share with those that you
love.
St. Paul was
right. “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful out of your
insecurity. Love is not arrogant, it isn't rude; Love
does not always insist on doing things ‘my way' on ‘my time'. Love is not
irritable or put upon or resentful when you do something nice for other people.
Love doesn't rejoice when others make mistakes or turn out not to have their
facts entirely straight. Love actually rejoices in even small victories when
those around you show even a little bit of growth and promise. Love bears all
things (especially when our loved ones are sick or dying, so maybe we could bear
a little more just now); Love believes in people, even when they are shaky and
not actualizing their potential. Love hopes and prays for the best, (especially
for the difficult and the dysfunctional).”