Yesterday was Family Day here in Ontario so I have been thinking about family, what makes for family, how it is to be family etc. etc. Sister Sledge sang the words, “We Are Family, I got all my sisters with me…” and it sounded like a wonderful, exuberant, fun-filled experience and often family is. But, family can be hard work and difficult and sometimes families break apart.
I have been blessed, and I do count it a blessing, to have a close and supportive family. We get along and we enjoy being together. But sometimes challenges arise and conflicts and hurt feelings happen. We like each other but we don’t always agree on everything. Okay, I will admit it, sometimes we don’t always like each other either! Thankfully that feeling is rare.
Families come in all shapes and sizes and descriptions. I am glad that our province has a day to celebrate family and gives the day off work for many so that we can spend time together as family. I did that yesterday and it was a good day.
We often speak of the church as family although I had a professor once caution against that. He advised that many people have family issues that can be carried into congregational life especially if we encourage people to think of the congregation as family. He thought it better to use the word community as that word carried less “baggage”. I understand that approach but I think the word family can be a good descriptor of a congregation and, in fact, sometimes in congregations the way we treat each other (for good or ill) is more like family dynamics than community dynamics. Recently I was chatting with my sister. Our church experiences often come up in the conversation and we concluded, “Nobody can fight like church people.” And it is true. People are sometimes surprised that conflicts arise in church but it should not be a surprise. People’s faith and corporate experience of faith is very important to them. Passions run deep around this primal spiritual expression. It is no wonder that people get exercised when they feel their church lets them down and as a result their confidence and grounding is diminished. St. Paul wrote many of his first century epistles to congregations with the message to get along and urging them to resolve their conflict.
Facing negative feelings in family can be hard. Hard to admit to and hard to sort out but that is what it is to be a fully engaged human being. Working through the hard feelings can take us to a deeper spiritual place. Facing our anger, our disappointment, our failings and then forgiving ourselves and others can open us to a place for healing and a place for God. Family is the arena where this happens most often and is the place where we exercise our humanity to its fullest. It was Robert Frost who wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Thank God for family. Whatever it looks like, wherever it is, however hard or joyous it is.
