Who are my mother and brothers?

I come from a traditional family.   My parents have been married for forty years.  My grandparents were married for longer.   The only step anything I have are nieces/nephews, and one cousin, who I do not call my step cousin, just my cousin.  I have seen--and benefited from--effects of a traditional two parent home.   I know what it means to belong without actually fitting in to a family.   I have also noticed that the older I get the more I realize how absolutely blessed I am to have been born to these people.   We have our problems, same as everybody else, but at the core of it we still love each other and when it hits the fan, we back each other up. 

I'm convinced that's what makes my family functional.   Functional in the sense  that at the moment everyone is speaking to everyone else and that we're all part of each other's lives.   Today's gospel reading made me think today that maybe Jesus' family was functional in the same way.   They may have thought he was nuts, but in the end, especially in the end, they showed up anyway.   Jesus, likewise, seems annoyed but uses the moment to make a point:

  Mark 3:31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.
3:32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you."
3:33 And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"
3:34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!
3:35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

Notice that the ties that bind could not have possibly been severed completely because we have his brother James showing up in the Book of Acts at the Council of Jerusalem and his mother follows him to the cross.  No one is throwing anyone away here.    He's just widening the circle.  Widening the circle big time.

I once had the big brass lady balls to say at church that my family never shows up and I have no one to spend Midnight Mass with.   I was immediately corrected.   I say big brass lady balls because those people have been putting up with me since I was 15 years old.   I should know by now that those people are my family.   Put a qualifier of church family on it if you must, at this point, I think we're stuck with each other.

There's more than one way to be family.   I saw La Cage aux Folles Friday night with my good friend and her fiance and saw that played out on the stage.  The crazy maid, the straight son, the drag queen mother, and the father trying to play referee between his son's desire to get past his future in-laws and his partner's need for recognition for his role in raising the boy.   What makes a family?  Is it children?  Long suffering each other's company?  Who was more of a mother?  We didn't see much of her, but I think Ann's mother was more interested in keeping that corn cob in its place than in making her daughter happy.  I think in that family it was the mother.  He wasn't just his father's partner, he was the one who turned their house into a home.  That deserved respect.   Jean Michael deserved respect too.  He turned out different than his parents without turning his back on them, and dealt with all the trauma and drama that comes from the way people reacted to his family when he was growing up.  

There's more to raising kids and living right than being in a traditional relationship and having the equipment to produce offspring.  I know families that are incredibly dysfunctional that are not broken homes in the sense that the parents are divorced.  They are broken in the sense that the love just isn't there.   The father tries to kill the daughter and no one, especially not the mother, calls the cops.  The daughter doesn't think she has any business getting angry about not being protected.  It's just broken.  Never mind that there's not a divorce decree involved, that family is broken.

So what makes a family?  Blood?  Affection?  In the case of Jesus, whoever does the will of God?

Go Tread on Yourself

I've been thinking about this for months, thanks to the wonderful time Congress had deciding to raise the debt ceiling. I should call it what it was---which a partisan fueled idiot festival of stupidity and posturing. I realize that we are in financially deep trouble in this country. We spend more than we take in. In my house, that means I have to do two things. The first being to either stop buying x, y, or z, and the second being to make more money. Yes, more money.

I think what has been bothering me about this whole thing is that Congress---or at least the Republican party has been refusing to even entertain the notion of raising revenue. They have even started calling rich people 'job creators' instead of rich people. They claim that eliminating tax cuts for the rich is going to keep them from creating jobs. Am I the only one who thinks it's wrong for someone who runs a company to pay lower tax rate than their employees? Am I the only one who thinks she could eat a 3% tax hike? I hope not. I make less than $30,000 a year. If I can do it, so can they.

The thing is that we all benefit from government services. All of us. We drive on roads. When we call 911 someone shows up at the door with a stretcher. Unemployment benefits? You PAY for that. It's a government program but it is insurance. Social security? I don't know anyone receiving it who hasn't been paying into that system since they got their first little paycheck from their first little job. Call it an entitlement program, say it's unprofitable, but the truth is---we all pay for it. We all eventually hope to benefit from it. You're not paying for someone else when you pay for these services, you're paying for something that will benefit you.

Here comes the fun part: I'm going to call it like I see it. The programs that don't directly benefit you? That you don't like? So what? We are all born naked, useless, resource sucking, crying, screaming, little poverty stricken non contributing members of society. Does your city want to raise property taxes so they can remodel the schools that haven't been touched since 1970? Pay for it! Why? Someone paid for your education and it damn sure wasn't you. You don't have kids? So what. You used to be one. If you were suddenly out of work, wouldn't you want help with your bills? Quit being a damn sociopath and start caring about the people around you.

Because there may come a time when you need their help. You already do. If you have employees, wouldn't it suck if they all stopped coming to work? What if all of the sudden they stopped putting in any effort? How would you make any money? If your employees are sick but they can't afford to see a doctor because they don't have health insurance, aren't they going to stay home not making your any money for a longer amount of time? Come to work and spread their joy because they're desperate to get hours on the clock? As for the job creator thing, if trickle down economics worked, we should be experiencing the rewards of eight years of trickle right now.

We aren't. Tom Coburn had the guts to tell me in an email he didn't even vote for his own party's ridiculous solution to this problem. Wow. I guess he was pretty sure our soldiers would just keep on fighting for no pay and that not paying our bills (which he assured me would not have happened anyway) because he and his friends wouldn't do their jobs all year (it is August) and come up with a plan for running the country was okay. I know he's an evil old man so I'm not surprised. Earlier this year he held up aid to 911 responders, and I've even heard rumors he tied up money promised to Haiti because 1% of it wouldn't be spent in a way he liked.

We all need to grow up. Fire your congressman and women! They don't give enough of a crap about the rest of us or this country to work together, so they don't deserve to keep their careers. I was watching a program on tv today and I've been hearing rumors lately that Democrats and Republicans used to work together to get things done.

Wouldn't it be loverly?

Oh and tea baggers? Go tread on yourself. The rest of us want our country back and we want it to run right. Read a history book. Get a grip. Read that constitution you say you love so much.