Defining the Duties of the Day

What are a husband and wife's duties toward one another in a world where marriages may last over fifty years? What constitutes adultery; is stronger emotional or intellectual attachment, accompanied by time spent in communion, to someone other than one's spouse the same as physical attachment?

If marriage is a partnership, and families are communities, doesn't everything that affects one affect the whole family? When one community member is marginalized, doesn't that weaken the whole community? Where is one's fealty to one's family of origin superseded by one's responsibility to the family of one's making? Why don't we have sacred scriptures that address the issues of families in the modern age when we may live into our nineties and beyond?

How do we apply the Ten Commandments, written for a nomadic people fleeing persecution and a Bible that has very little to say about marriage, child rearing, and family life, to our long lives in the America of today?

Do I Dishonor My Mother?

When I turned from my mother, I meant no disrespect, though she read my actions as such. I turned away in terror for her and for her family that was being consumed by the manipulations of a woman with lust in her heart for our father.

My father had always been a favorite with women, even enticing our staid school principal, a nun, to dance with him at Knights of Columbus dances. We were used to him and his baby sister serenading each other with love songs duets like, "That Old Black Magic," much to the delight of their mother and their spouses. These flirtations with females carried on to his consistent compliments about the talents and beauty of his five daughters. When his girls began reaching puberty, Daddy sank into the dark night of his soul.

When Daddy rose from his bed after two years in his own valley of darkness of deep depression, there was a woman waiting to take him into her arms. She seduced him with words of wonder about his religion, pretending that she was seeking enlightenment from our family. She was a lounge singer who could help him escape into his world of romance where there were no noisy children, as she had given her small children away.

My mother was so anxious that she do nothing to keep a convert from entering the church that she turned a blind eye to what we could see was happening, but were powerless to stop.

As this woman drew our father further and further into her web, my brother and grandparents fell for her, too. My teen-aged brother welcomed the warm arms of a woman who would spend her unfulfilled lust for our father on him. My grandparents were so proud of their son's supposed spiritual conquest, that they became the woman's spiritual parents at baptism.

Our mother accepted all of this rather than fight for the faith of her family. We were her lambs, but she chose to embrace the wolf devouring us, rather than uphold the law of her religion. This was all done in the spirit of Christian kindness to those who are less than we are. What hubris this was on the parts of my parents and their parents! This woman had walked away from her own children, and now she was preying on us.

So began a parade through the family home of priestly and other perverts, drug dealers, prostitutes, and others who sought our souls. What could I do but walk away? Does this mean that I have dishonored my father and mother? How can one honor anyone who insists on dishonoring him or her self?

Adolescent Anarchy and Authority

We are all adolescents until we understand that our salvation is in being fully functioning humans, each with a Divine Spark. We set up situations in our lives to test the boundaries of those who say they care for us, attempting to have them reject us so that we can feel in control. We will often escalate our destructive and subversive behaviors in an effort to sever the loving relationship, rather than continue in the pain of our own vulnerability. The community turning away from our errant actions is not always the same as rejecting us as people. The person seeking others' answers is not the same as rejection of the community.

Sometimes, the only way to grow is to walk away. In healthy communities, this is seen as a way to obtain new strengths to bring back to the fold. In unhealthy communities, this is seen as a rejection of the whole, and the community will sever the relationship with us. Where there is mutual vulnerability, trust, and respect, there is hope for healing and wholeness.

Whether we like it or not, we are all dependent on others for different parts of ourselves to reach their fullness. In the old models of relationships, we were taught that the authority figures have no need for the strengths of those over whom they have authority. We were also taught that the oldest child is the heir to whom all the family strengths and responsibilities are passed, and that the job of the oldest is to equitably apportion the benefits of the family. This left all in the community emotionally and relationally crippled.

All real authority is actually derived from the willingness of the governed to accept leadership, and the leadership's willingness and ability to teach by example and support of the learning process. Anarchy ensues when authority is divided against itself, which causes collapse of community. The lack of growth when only one type of strength is honored causes stagnation, which is a form of slow death.

In all of creation, there is a strength that can only come from hybridization. The strength of the community is in the sum of its parts. In families, as in all communities, the strengths and weaknesses of all must be recognized and honored. Until we are all willing to be strong, vulnerable, and fair, alternating absolute authority and anarchy seems to be the scene that plays out since Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve walked away from a partnership with Divinity. Why are we still doing the same? What part of being made in the image and likeness of The Divine are we still not understanding?

How sad it is when absolute authority, destruction, and subversion are the only individual strengths a society is willing to recognize or exercise!

Relay Race of Life

I am in awe of The Almighty, but I don't feel afraid.
I know that there are others helping me handle
The path to Eternity that has been laid.

I'm only one runner in the relay race of life.
I can hand the baton over to another
When I've handled my share of strife.

There were many runners who came before me,
They ran a straighter and truer path,
And were faster than I could ever be.

It was my job to take the baton given
And run to the best of my ability
Whether or not I make it to Heaven.

But, I take comfort in firmly believing
We are all part of the same creation;
Some seeds of salvation are what I'm leaving.

Fathers and Faithfulness

I know it is Father's Day in America, so I sit contemplating my father and The Father of my father's faith. My husband spends the day emulating his father while I spend the day missing mine. I'd like to have had the chance to discuss faith and fathers with him.

We were taught that God is our Father and that we were to fear Our Father and our fathers. Who can blame our dads for their forms of discipline when they were led to believe that they were to strike fear in the hearts of their wives and children in order to more closely come to their God and lead their children to salvation. Those who quaked at the thought of Dad's wrath were considered saved, and were at least spared the rod. Those who refused to bow down to the behaviors of the master were severely punished, and often banished from our own "Garden of Eden."

Leading with love and self-discipline is not what the generations after Adam and Eve understood. They firmly believed that fear was sufficient to keep people in their folds. No matter how much example there has been to the contrary, we still seem to believe that varying degrees of punishment or permissiveness are the same as parenting.

How is it that, with all our advanced ability to think and make informed decisions, we seem to be less observant of our ways of procreation and parenting than the lowest animals. Like other animals, before we learn words, we observe and mimic behaviors. So many babies are exposed to their parents' wrath before they can even walk. Is it any wonder that we humans continue to act on fear, as animals that have only two modes of survival: fight and flight?

Maybe it's time that we revisit maternal love that conceives, gestates, and bonds in order to mold an image of what is experienced. In order to be faithful as a father, one must truly meld with the mother before producing progeny. And then they must lead with love and right living. Fear doesn't foster friendship; nor does it nourish family faith. Faithfulness fosters faith.

Higher Power and Peace

When we speak of a higher power, we must understand that The Higher Power is manifest in the whole of creation, and that we must find a way to function for the good of the whole in order to feel ourselves as part of this Eternal Entity. All entities that derive their power through instilling or encouraging fear, or promoting absolute authority of any one person, are not part of the network of Eternal Inclusion that is the path back to Perfection.

If we are indeed the branches on a Universal Vine, we must be fed by a strong, healthy root system in order to thrive and produce good fruit. Until we are willing to submit to something greater than ourselves, we are doomed to live destructive lives. For some, that greater something is their family; for others, it is their church; for still others, it is their AA group, or their military unit, or their neighbors, or their workplace.

The sacred scriptures and stories of all ages have attempted to produce a path back to Perfect Peace. The Eternal Force that embodies all of creation goes by many names. Some refer to this Spirit of Unity as The Great Spirit, some Yahweh, some God, some Jesus, some The Holy Spirit, some a Higher Power. We seem to all be seeking the same thing: a sense of belonging to a protective, peaceful Whole.

My children were my reason for attaching myself to something outside of myself. Now that they are grown, they and their families have attached themselves to networks of others that will help them in their journeys. Those who continue to run from sharing their trues selves with family and friends find themselves in their own dark dungeons in their souls. This is no way to bring up babies; nor is it a way to produce peace.

I believe that the sacred is still being spoken and written, and that we must open ourselves to sharing our own sacred stories.

Making Peace with Our Parents

It seems to be universal that children who have lost a parent, whether to death, divorce, or abandonment, forever feel that they themselves are deficient in some way. Maybe we can't fully become who we are meant to be without wrestling with our elders until we come to an equilibrium of abilities.

Having a steady light of home life is a safety net for spiritual seekers. The important thing seems to be that the elders stay steadfastly on their own paths, at the same time as they allow exploration and growth in their dependents. The keepers of the flame must allow the weary wanderers a place around the fire, but must keep them from infecting the innocent with anarchy.

At fourteen, I effectively lost my parents. My father had come out of a two-year-long depression as a man I no longer knew, acting the part of a naughty teenager when what our large family of soon-to-be teens needed was a patriarch. My mother refused to face that fact that Daddy and the leaders to whom she had entrusted her children were bringing all manner of sin to her home and her progeny.

This all happened at the same time as our country and our church were turning away from all our old rules in the 1960s. We had no more societal norms. Irresponsible sex, drugs, and anarchy became the new norm in our home, our church, and our country.

My mother and I began a very tumultuous relationship based on her belief that women were to be apparently submissive to men, at the same time as we were encouraged to be secretly subversive. I was never one to be secretly anything, so I often found myself feeling like the child announcing, "The emperor has no clothes!"

I seemed to see it as a way to affect change that I thought others would want, but this did not play out in my experience. How is one to know when others are whispering and pointing out the problem that they are all in on a secret that they pretend nobody else knows? I became the family outcast in my mother's eyes, while to my daddy, I became another of his flirtations with frivolous females.

I have since asked myself whether we are to go along with the community in an effort to keep peace, or is it our duty to walk our own path when the community seems to be blinded by their traditions and fear of truth and the accompanying change? At what point are we justified in saying that we see the same mistakes being repeated, no matter how uncomfortable this may make those around us?

Change made too rapidly, and without understanding and honoring the past, is doomed to create more harm than lasting good. Honoring does not mean repeating the past; it simply means studying it to obtain an understanding of what works and what doesn't work in the promotion of the eternal quest for a community of social justice. Social justice, it seems to me, depends on cooperation of all of creation, with an orderly way to affect and incorporate change.

Shortly before my mother died, she wrote to me that I had a "gift" for "challenging." I received her note after her death. Had we finally come to an acceptance of each other as we are? Was she granting me her permission to openly challenge that which she had been alternately submitting to and subverting? Can the fighting factions inside my soul finally make peace with each other?