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?

Listening

I've been thinking a lot about relationships lately. A fight with your brother, your brother from another mother, your best friend, and your employer will do that to you, especially if all happens in one year. We like to tell our friends and our family that we "hear" them. We tell them that we understand. Do we?

I know that a lot of the time in my life I hear what I want to. I convince myself that my relationship with my friends is good because we talk a lot and we don't fight. My family and I haven't had a real blowout in a while, so we must be doing okay. I can even convince myself that my relationship with God is doing alright because, well, I got to church a couple times a week and I do a lot of talking there.

I don't always do so hot on the listening though. I don't really know what's going on with my friends because we don't talk about that. We talk about the weather, the size of shoes the babies are wearing, what they're doing at school. All this and I still don't know what's going on with them. Not really. Same thing with family.

Then there's God. If there's one thing I've learned in the 19 years since my conversion, it's that if I don't hear God talking to me, it's because I haven't been listening. My mind is a lot like a jar of fireflies. My thoughts buzz around in the air in there and never quite settle to the ground. I know this. I know this and I know how to settle myself but generally speaking, I don't do it. I don't do it because it takes time. It takes vulnerability. The thing about prayer that most people don't realize is that it's dangerous. If you let God into your life, if you let that still small voice get under your skin and creep into your brain, he pushes you. Sometimes it's to be friends with someone you don't think you want to be friends with, and sometimes it's right out of your comfort zone onto the cold concrete where you can't help but look at yourself from an outside point of view. I'm not saying it's fun. I'm saying that "it's always good and when the flood is gone we still remain". (Country song, Like the Rain, Clint Black.) I know that God is going to be there when I come out at the other end of this tunnel. He isn't fickle. He may not do for me what I think I want but he'll be there. Whether I'm listening or not, he'll be there.

Every time I think God isn't working fast enough or that he isn't hearing me I find it useful to ask " Am I listening?

I will Sing to the Lord

Advent Devotion for my church's E-Devotions program

I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me. ~Psalm 13:6

The psalmist prays this before he sees his prayers answered. He says I will sing to the Lord. He knows he will. The Lord hasn’t dealt bountifully with David yet, but he will.

I like to believe that Advent is about learning to wait with faith. Waiting with expectation that God will act in our lives even if it seems like he hasn’t done anything yet. I’m not saying we can force God to act through prayer. I’m saying that the kind of faith that makes David a man after God’s own heart is the kind of faith that anticipates blessing because he knows that God cares for him.

“Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.”