THE YEAR OF THE FAMILY
YOU
November/December 1980
by Andrew Costello
_________________________________________
QUESTIONNAIRE
1980 was
the Year of the Family. Did it work?
1979 was the Year of the Child. Did it work?
1981 will be the Year of the Elderly. Will it work?
1982 will be the Year of the Handicapped? Will it work?
ANSWERS
Unless you are a
George Gallup or an Andrew Greeley and you have the advantage of a research
institute you really cannot give an answer to the first two questions above.
You can give opinions or feelings, but you cannot give a professional
answer. And even if you were Gallup or
Greeley you would have to present quite a few clarifications because the questions
cover an awful lot of territory.
THIS ISSUE
In this issue of
YOU I would like to stress that each of us can look at our own territory. We
can stay within our own boundaries, our own skins, and answer the questions for
ourselves. Have I changed in any way with regards family life in 1980 -- the
Year of the Family? In 1979 did I do
anything different with regards children because it was the International Year
of the Child? In 1981 and 1982 will I be
different in my attitudes and dealings with the elderly and the handicapped?
In this issue of
YOU I want to reflect with you on the family -- making this a sort of
questionnaire or better, an examination of conscience or review of life. The
hope is that by putting the spotlight on issues that we often keep in the dark,
we will change when we see them in a new light. This question of family is
central to all of us (whether single, married, widow, widower, separated,
divorced, nun, priest, brother, etc.) All of us are connected to people. Our
roots get tangled with each other's roots. We are all connected to families.
In this reflection
I want to consider:
§
dad
and mom (whether living or dead),
§
brothers
an sisters (if any),
§
spouse
(if married),
§
children
(if any),
§
close
friends and people I deal with regularly,
§
unraveling
family knots
§
the
real and the ideal,
§
conversion
New Testament style.
BEGINNING: ADAM AND EVE
When God created
Adam he quickly created Eve and they quickly created Cain and Abel and the
Bible quickly started using the word “begat” more and more and more.
It is not good for
any of us to be alone. We need family. We need community. We need friends. Both
Robinson Crusoe and Martin Buber tell us that every I needs a Thou. And so in
1980 we are urged by church and society to look at our primary need -- our
primary relationship -- our family. Each of us has a dad and mom. (I think it
was Groucho Marx who said, “If your parents didn't have any children, chances
are you won't have any either.”
What is the quality
of my family life? Is the air at home good to breathe? On a scale of 1 to 10
how would I rate my family? Convent as family? Rectory as family? Parish as
family? Is it a Garden of Paradise or are we banished outside the gates of
happiness where we spend our days blaming and killing each other just as Adam
blamed Eve and Cain killed Adam?
THIS IS YOUR LIFE
Get 3 chairs. Sit
in one of them. Now play the old T.V. game, “This Is Your Life.” It can be a
great way to meditate. Picture God in one chair and then one by one picture in
the third chair the different people in your life.
Start with dad.
What is he like? Do you care for him? How many times did the two of you ever
sit down like this and have a good talk together? If you have brothers and
sisters, who was his favorite? (Bring that question up this Thanksgiving or
Christmas or whenever you get together. It can be a real eye opener or can of
worms.) How do the answers to that question feel? If your dad is dead, do you
believe he is with God? In the film, “The Walls Come Tumbling Down” -- an
Insight film put out by the Paulist Fathers, Max (played by Jack Albertson) is
completely surprised when God (played by Martin Sheen) tells him that his dad
is with Him in heaven. “Oh, so he made it.”
Be quiet and take a
real long look at your dad. What is it like to be him? Listen: he'll tell you
his story. If he is still living, please God you'll take the next opportunity
when the two of you are alone to get some answers to these questions.
Next invite your
mom into that chair your dad was in. Ask her the same questions. How do you
relate to her? Are there any questions she wants to ask you? Any problems?
Resentments? Thanks? If you had to list 5 likes and 5 dislikes what would they
be regards mom? If she had to do the same about you, what would they be? A
priest friend of mine told me that he had to fly home for his mother's funeral.
Instead of going to the funeral parlor right away, he went first to a quiet
chapel to say Mass for his mom. In the penitential rite of the liturgy he had
the deepest conversation he ever had with his mom in his life. Unfinished
business was taken care of and he walked to the funeral parlor filled with
inner peace. If we find a quiet place and we know how to use our imagination to
picture people sitting with us, we can have important conversations with both
the living and the dead.
Then after dad and
mom put one by one the important people in your life in that third chair:
husband, wife, kids, friends, brothers, sisters, people you life with or work
with. Obviously this exercise will take a lot of time and emotional energy.
However it can help you get in touch face to face with a lot of unresolved
conflicts and unfinished business that you perhaps have been avoiding for
years.
All of us are
constantly carrying on parts of hundreds and hundreds of conversations from the
past within our head. This exercise of the 3 chairs gets us to be like
telephone operators connecting us up with one person at a time.
But be careful.
This is “touchy” stuff because we obviously hold onto conflicts and negative
stuff from the past that never were settled. Instead of good memories, we tend
to remember when we were not given a fair shake by parents, brothers, sisters,
spouse, friends, etc. That's the bad news. The good news is that God is in that
second chair watching and listening to everything that is going on. By prayer,
by bringing God into our story, the story can change. God's presence and God's
care for each of us in the two other chairs can bring about a reconciliation --
the lack of which might be draining us of all kinds of energy that could be
used to help the people in our life.
CONVERSION
What we are talking
about is conversion -- a major change in our way of seeing and living. We're
talking about root changes. We're talking about going with God down into our basement
and looking at the very foundation stones of our life. (Cf. Matthew 7: 24 - 27)
Dig into any
person's life and you'll always come to family -- mom, dad, brothers, sisters,
husband, wife, children. I found out by listening to other people that my
relationship to my dad and my brother were crucial for the way I act. And I
know that if I continue to reflect and pray about my family relationships I'll
discover more and more how my mom and my two sisters effect my life.
Central to
Christianity then is this message of conversion and change. Central to the Year
of the Family is improvement of family life. Central to the message of this
issue of YOU is that I change with regards my attitudes and dealings within my
family.
EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE
1) Is there anybody
in my family I am avoiding or refusing to forgive? Is a reconciliation
possible?
2) Do I ever pray
with my family? Read Scripture together? Rosary? Quiet prayer time together?
Shared prayer together?
3) Is God the
center of our family life -- or is it the T.V. or has the center dropped out of
our family and we're all going our own separate ways?
4) Do we really
believe that marriage and family is a sacrament -- an outward sign instituted
by Jesus Christ to give grace to each other and to all the people who walk into
our home and our life? When people meet us or visit our home (convent, rectory,
etc.,) do they walk away lifted in spirit or was it a wrong move on their part?
5) How does money
effect our lives -- our time together -- the quality of our lives?
6) Do we speak to
each other with words other than sports, weather, clothes, school, food, and
the world out there?
7) Do we really
listen to each other -- not just to the words -- but to the silence, the body
language, the eyes, the hands, the lumps in the throat? Do we plan together? Do
we play cards or games together? Do we go out, for example, to a dinner or a
wedding or a picnic without discussing possible problems that came up the last
time we went out together?
8) Do we say to
each other inwardly, but never outwardly, ideas like, “You can't be lonely,” or
“You can't feel that way,” or “You can't think that way,” or “You can't be that
way,” or “You can't say that”?
9) Do we hold onto
mistakes, comments, sins, problems that another member of the family made 15
years ago?
10) Do we make
allowances for growth, change, and development? Do we realize that we all grow
differently and at different speeds?
11) With regards my
family, if I had one year to live I would .... If I had one month, one week,
one day to live, I would ....
UNRAVELING THE KNOTS
Obviously family
life is complicated. So maybe that's why we need a whole year to reflect upon
it. It takes a long time to unravel its knots, spread out its different threads,
and figure out just what pattern we're really after.
A few years ago I
had a special opportunity that showed me how complicated a problem can be. It
showed how unaware we all can be and why people and families and groups can tie
themselves in knots. I attended a week long workshop on the topic of “Group
Development Skills.” It was run by an organization called MATC (Mid-Atlantic
Training Committee, Inc. Suite 325, 1000 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington,
D.C. 20005). This organization runs many different kinds of programs, for
example, “Experiential Education Design Skills”, “Organization Development
Training Program”, etc.
Well after giving
us various theories about ways groups behave, we broke up into small groups so
that we could experience first hand what the workshop leaders had presented. We
were given time to try to put the theory into practice. I was part of a small
group of 7 who were given the following imaginary situation. We were 7 friends
who had $200,000 and our goal was to build a vacation house available to all of
us. We were given a certain amount of time to work out what kind of a house we
wanted, where to locate it, and how it could be available to all 7 of us and
our families. What was interesting was that we had 3 of the workshop leaders
sitting outside our circle observing and taking notes on how each of us
functioned in a small group.
In the beginning
the 7 of us were rather polite and organized -- artificially bringing in and
practicing the techniques that had been presented to help small groups work
better. However as soon as we got going into our discussion we forgot the
observers looking over our shoulders and most of what they had taught us. The
situation became real -- people dealing with people -- the stuff of everyday life.
Late in the
afternoon our group hit a snag. Rita, one of our group, started asking for a
complete change in plans. She wanted us to start all over again. Things we had
decided on much earlier she wanted eliminated. We were almost finished our
project and here she wanted to go backwards. We disagreed with her. What had
started out as an imaginary game to teach us about small groups had become a
real life situation. We got angry with her and told her that she was too late.
“Well, if that's the case,” she countered, “I want my money back.” Frustration
and confusion increased. I sat there saying to myself. “What's wrong with this
woman? Weird! Well, I guess I'll never understand woman.”
We ran out of time and never finished our task. The next day the 7 of us sat down with our 3 observers and they asked us, “What happened?” We didn't know. They suggested that we use a process often used in MATC programs. It's called, “E.I.A.G.: A Theory of Learning.” Each letter stands for a step. It's an excellent 4 step process for unraveling knots.
“E” stands for an
EXPERIENCE. Our experience was that of Rita suddenly changing her plans. As a
result we had to stop what we were doing and try to deal with her, and as a
result, our goal of making a common decision of using $200,000 to build a
vacation house all 7 of us could be happy with, was never completed.
“I” stands for
Identify. This second step is to be more specific and identify a part of the
experience that needs to be looked at more clearly. We decided to look at
Rita's sudden change of behavior when she started saying things like, “I want a
different kind of a house,” or “I want to build in a different place” or “I
want my money back.”
“A” stands for
ANALYSIS. This is the hardest step in the “E.I.A.G” process. It's the WHY
question. Why did Rita change her plans? Why did she want her money back?” Why
did she start to get obnoxious? When we started into this step we began to get
a bit nervous, because we were getting into the area of motivation and judging
others. Maybe she had psychological problems and often did things like this. An
observer sensing our fear stepped in and said, “Ok, we have an hour till lunch.
So let's analyze what happened.” I was glad he stepped in because none of us,
including Rita, could figure out just WHY she did what she did. The observer
asked Rita if she had gone to the bathroom yesterday. She blushed and said, “Of
course.” “When?” “How should I know?” “Well,” asked the observer, “did you go
to the bathroom during the afternoon session?” We all were quiet for a moment
and Rita finally said, “Yes.”
Then the observer
asked us, “Did anybody see Rita get up and go to the bathroom yesterday
afternoon?” “No.” “Well,” the observer said, “to save time, it was after Rita
went to the bathroom that she started asking for a change in plans.”
Rita said, “Well,
when I went to the bathroom someone was in there and it was the only bathroom
on this floor. Whoever was in there got me mad till she finally came out.”
“Well, is that the reason why you got mad at the group?” Silence. “I don't
know.”
Then the observer
asked us, “When did you make the decision that the vacation was going to be in
Maryland? Was it before or after Rita went to the bathroom?”
All of a sudden
Rita slapped her leg and yelled, “It happened when I was in the bathroom.”
There it was: the crux of our problem. Suddenly we realized that we had made a
key decision and Rita was not in on it. We didn't even notice it had happened.
She didn't know it had happened -- consciously. All she knew was that something
had changed while she was gone and we didn't let her in on it.
The day before
people had gone in and out of the group several times for coffee or to go to
the bathroom, but as far as we knew, Rita was the only one left out of a major
decision. It all happened so fast. We were tired. We were near the end of the
process. When she came back she couldn't figure out what had happened while she
was gone. So Rita did the best thing she could think of to stop whatever was
happening. When we ignored her, she “threw sand in the engine.” She said she
wanted a different kind of vacation house. When that didn't work, she wanted
her money back. That worked. It stopped us and we never did finalize our
putting down on paper all our plans to build a $200,000 vacation house that all
7 of us could use.
“G” stands for
GENERALIZE. This is the last step in the “E.I.A.G.” process. An observer asked
us when else did this happen? The answers were man: a) When a husband comes
home from work and finds out at supper that his wife made plans that Monday
morning for them to play cards that evening at 9:00 -- forgetting all about
Howard Cosell and Monday Night Football. b) When teenagers have a Saturday
afternoon all planned and all of a sudden they find out Saturday morning that
dad had it planned all week that they had to go to grandma's at 1:00 that
afternoon. c) In churches when parish councils and committees find out that
they were ignored in decisions about things they were supposed to be consulted
on.
That night when I
had some time to think about what had happened to Rita and our group, I
realized that here was the reason why a lot of things in my dealings with
others had gone wrong. I realized here was the reason why the learnings of so
many programs and workshops never go beyond the day they end. (Somebody else
set up the agenda and decided that this was what the participants needed.) Here
was the reason why the decrees of Vatican II had so much trouble being
implemented. The decisions were made while we were in another room. And if
people think they should be part of the decision making process they might
“throw sand in the engine” because they were not informed about what was
happening. Here was a process -- “E.I.A.G.” -- that could help families to try
to figure out “what happened” when they find themselves all tied up in knots.
THE REAL AND THE IDEAL
The ideal thing to
do then is that every group and every family in a parish (including convent,
rectory, school, etc.) make time and have a method so that people could unravel
the knots they find themselves in. It would be ideal if the whole church could
somehow be brought together for its discussions and decisions.
Obviously in
practice a lot of things we would love to do are impossible. Take families.
Part time jobs, cheer leader practice, sudden accidents, cake sales, track
meets, and a hundred other everyday events prevent even the closest of families
to do the things they would love to do together. How could we expect more from
the whole church or even a whole parish?
And this puts us
right in the middle of one of the central issues of life: The Real Vs. The
Ideal. And even this problem has all kinds of knots of its own that need to be
unraveled. Besides needing to go to the bathroom and all those other things
mentioned in the last paragraph, a lot of other things prevent the ideal from
being reached -- money, differences in personality, style, models, sin, -- to
name just a few.
Historians like
Thomas S. Kuhn and theologians like Avery Dulles have pointed out the obvious
-- but often unnoticed fact -- that people have different models in mind for
what a situation should be like. Parents with a station wagon full of kids know
this when it comes time to pick between McDonalds or Burger King. They know it
when it comes time to turn their one TV on or where the different members would
like to go for a vacation. Often a wife has one ideal for how kids should be
raised and a husband quite another and their kids a third, forth and fifth
ideal. As Avery Dulles has clearly pointed out, people in the church have
different models on how they want their church to be. Some do and some do not
want to be part of the discussion and the decision making process. They are
perfectly content to be told what to do.
Besides models and
many other issues, SIN also gets in the way of the ideal being reached. Even if
Rita didn't go to the bathroom when we made a key decision without her, she or
anyone of us could have “thrown sand in the engine” of progress because of jealousy,
or pride, or anger -- just to name some of the sinful patterns that can flow
through families and groups in their power struggles.
In order to survive
we have to learn how to live in the real world of weakness and sin and
personality differences. Some people have a lot of trouble accepting this. They
find it hard to deal with ambiguity. They want the ideal so badly that the real
crushes them. The wife wants the ideal husband and every time she sees “Mr.
Wonderful” down the street playing frisbee or football with his kids or putting
out the garbage, she gets angry with her pot bellied husband down the cellar
working with his electric trains. Or nuns get in their own way when the convent
they are stationed in is not the ideal and they have a model of a convent they
wished existed somewhere in mind. Priests give bad sermons. Fathers get drunk.
Mothers scream at the wrong kid. People forget they are in the shower and use
up all the hot water. Teenagers scratch records. Kids spill spaghetti. Jam
always gets into the peanut butter jar. People commit adultery. People have to
go to the bathroom and we make decisions while they are there and we don't even
know we did it.
We're against sin
-- but we have to learn to live with it. It's like riding the New York Subway.
If you want to use it to get to work, you have to learn to live with the crush
of people -- some of whom never seem to have watched those soap and deodorant
ads on T.V. It's the same way if we want to ride this planet. We're all
sinners. The sheep are mixed in with the goats, the weeds are mixed in with the
wheat, and we're not going to be separated till the ride is over.
Look at Jesus. He
ate with sinners. He lived with Peter and Judas. And if we don't accept this
reality -- this fact that all of us are sinners -- we're in for an awful lot of
inner frustration. We're in for a very unhappy ride.
As usual the secret
is to start with ourselves. This is Jesus' New Testament message (Matthew
7:3-5; 23:25-28). In reality each of us has wheat and weeds, sheep and goats,
running around inside ourselves. The plot isn't that some of us are good and
the others are bad. That was the Pharisees' model of how things were. All of us
contain all of us. We're both the good guy and the bad guy, the Pharisee and the
Publican. Some days we play the villain and some days we play the Good
Samaritan. And if we cannot live with the fact that we sin, then we might as
well be like Judas and go out and commit suicide. We make mistakes. We sin.
Obviously we don't know enough about Judas. It's too late to do an “E.I.A.G.”
on him. Yet it seems to me that he's the model of the person who gets the ideal
in the way of the real. His statue should be taken down and perhaps Peter's put
in its place.
PUT ON
This does not mean
that we give up striving for the ideal family life. No, but it means that just
as we have to learn to live with ourselves and our own weaknesses, we must
learn to live with others and their strengths and weaknesses.
And what is the
ideal family? The ideal convent? The ideal rectory? The ideal parish? We find
it in the New Testament vision of Jesus. We see it in practice in the picture
of the early church in the Acts of the Apostles. We see that the ideal, the
dream of Jesus, is that our family is made up of all those who hear the word of
God and act upon it (Luke 8:21). We find out from Paul that “All of you who
have been baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with him. There does not
exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male of female. All are one in
Christ” (Galatians 3: 27-28)
And in Paul's
letter to the Ephesians -- where we find various valuable comments about family
life --- we have an ideal way to improve family life. Paul uses the example of
a soldier getting dressed for battle. He has to PUT ON various pieces of
equipment. Paul compares putting on a belt to putting on truth, putting on the
breastplate to putting on justice, putting on footgear to propagating the
gospel of peace. (Cf. Ephesians 6:10-17.) Well, each day, each of us puts on
clothes, but they are not part of us. The same can be said of practicing
various virtues or ideals that might not be natural to us. Being patient,
understanding, forgiving, helping one another, etc., need to be practiced at
first. We have to PUT ON being patient -- actually not being ourselves if we
tend to be rather impatient with certain people. But through practice -- as all
the old spiritual writers tell us -- patience, forgiveness, kindness, trust,
not being jealous, unselfishness, -- and all the other virtues needed for an
ideal family life can become second nature to us. (Cf. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13)
CONCLUSION
1980 was the Year
of the Family. Did it work? In general we can report that in many parishes
there were sermons, workshops, seminars on family. These made people more aware
of the need for conversion. We can also report that there has been an improved
awareness of the cries, the pains, the needs, the problems of families, of
those preparing for marriage, for those married, for the separated, those
divorced, the gay, the alienated, the forgotten, etc. We can report that the
recent Synod of Bishops in Rome focused in on the family. The ideal was not
achieved in this Year of the Family, but there are real signs of small
improvements.
But as the current
cliche goes: “Let's get to the bottom line.” We are the answer to the question
whether 1980 -- the Year of the Family -- worked. If you answer “Yes, I
improved,” then this year, this Christmas, your family is getting the best gift
possible -- a better YOU.
