Family Matters

My family, which includes my two living parents (still happily married), nine children, seven spouses, 22 nieces and nephews and some grand-nieces/nephews, has a Yahoo group listserv that I set up several years back, and over the past year it has become quite a forum for political and religious debate.


As the family is loosely based in Southern California, the debate is revolving around Proposition 8, which I don't know the details of, but seems to be put forth by opponents of same-sex marriage. Within my family, the religious bloc (Roman Catholic and Evangelical) has a solid majority and has been weighing in solidly in favor of Prop 8. Apparently, zealots who are not in favor of Prop. 8 have been doing inappropriate things like ripping the Yes on 8 bumper sticker off my nephew Sam's car and stealing yard signs from other family members. This the family Prop 8 supporters use as evidence that homosexuals are an angry lot who are asking for more than they deserve. Um, good going, anti-Prop 8 zealots... NOT!

Anyway, I have been mostly responsible within my own family for waving the liberal flag while also pointing out the consistencies of progressive views with the Christian gospel. It hasn't been an easy task. No matter what I say, none of the family religious conservatives seem to concede any points to me. What? Did I think I could change their minds?

I ask questions, the most compelling ones of which are mostly answered with silence. If abortion is made illegal and women who break that law are charged as murderers, do we try them for infanticide? What is the appropriate punishment? (Hello? Anyone here? Echo echo echo echo...) What is sacred about your marriage? So far, mostly silence, except from one sister and her husband who are heavily involved in the Marriage Encounter movement.

My essays are well-crafted and I use all my writer's faculties of eloquence, using apples-to-apples comparisons, and employing compelling images. If I'm not going through all this trouble to change them, then why am I doing it? After all, the more truthfully I write, the more I "out" myself as a freethinker, a free-doer, and a free-lover. I surely risk their affinity if not their respect.

I do hope that I prick at their conscience as reality pricked at mine, eventually eroding my orthodoxy. But there's another reason.

Remember that huge family of mine? Take 22 kids, and there's going to be a homosexual or two, probably an abortion in there somewhere, some drug use, perhaps some other things that may one day lead to alienation. I hope to be, and it would be my privilege as well to be, that family member they can come to for support. Maybe I can even be a support for the one caught in hatred or discomfort who wants to get past it. I hope to be a vessel, a container, for that trust and love. Perhaps it will never come to pass within my own blood family, but I am blessed to be that container for my "larger" human family.

In her missive about gay marriage, one of my sisters, the one who is involved in Marriage Encounter, went down the line of all my married brothers and sisters, praising them for what they and their marriage bring to the world. When she got to me, the last of the nine, and the only one who has never been married, she said, "sorry we are not too close ... and so I can't comment on how you are life-giving to others in your daily life."

So I invited my sister to call me and find out. And after I wrote that response, I was suddenly confronted with how it would be difficult to communicate that to her. I think she could get her brain around the spiritual direction work I do -- after all, that comes from the Catholic tradition although it has been adopted by most major spiritual movements today. That I helped establish a fish farm in the Peruvian Shipibo hamlet of San Francisco Yarinacocha should provide some information. But what about the work that I do in sacred sexuality, endeavoring to make it safer for people, many of whom like myself are single and sexually active, to become more alive, more pure energetically, more satisfied, and more loving of themselves and others? Could she get this when she believes that sex outside of marriage is a sin by its very nature? Do I go all the way, and share that last component with her?

It is not easy to be an outsider, the mysterious and feared "Other" who lives outside the city walls, to be the one who on one hand feeds the larger culture's imagination and yet is reviled and suspected on the other hand. It's a tough, sacred mission. It is big fun, big trouble, and rarely is it ever popular with one's own family of origin.