Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
December 16, 2001

All in the Family

If we take the traditional story at face value, it would appear that Christmas has its origin in a less than fully functional family. Beginning with a pre-marital pregnancy by an unidentified father, continuing with homelessness and political persecution -- there was a lot going on in Mary and Joseph's early years together, and rather than working on their communication skills, he was taking advice from angels appearing in dreams. It's a far cry from the Norman Rockwell vision of three generations gathered around the dinner table in a haze of candle light and mutual affection. But it is probably better to think of both of these images, the manger scene and the Hallmark nostalgia, as a form of myth; they are images that powerfully inform our ideas and expectations, without needing any demonstrable historical reality.

I, for one, have never been to one of those family reunion celebration dinners that actually felt like the greeting card ideal. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa; pick your holiday, the same forces are at work, I suspect. Real families, like real people, are never as warm and accepting and unconditional as we imagine them; real relationships are always more ambiguous and complex than will fit comfortably into those sentimental molds. Indeed, as Patrick Dennis demonstrates, there is much about the holiday season that raises the stakes, and makes us both more conscious of the tensions in our closest relationships, and more likely to behave in ways that intensify them. Such heightened awareness often brings about the very disappointments and confrontations that seem to set some families, perhaps our own, apart from all others as dysfunctional, and failures -- or perhaps just not quite what we wish they would be.

Drawing on the writings of family therapist Harriet Lerner, I would like to spend a few moments this morning reflecting on this annual paradox of family behavior. Are there conscious choices we could make about our own roles and behavior that could calm down the chaos, and help our experiences to be more satisfying, intimate, and genuinely nourishing during this season? It is an urgent question for me, as I contemplate my father-in-law's failing health, my role in my husband's family, the professional choices that separate me from my own parents and siblings at this time of year, and how to cultivate the long-standing friendships that constitute my own relational context.

Basing her observations on the pioneering work of psychologist Murray Bowen in understanding family systems, Harriet Lerner suggests that authentic intimacy is a quality of relationship in which participants can speak openly about what is important to them, can define and act out of their individual values, beliefs and preferences, and can express both competence and vulnerability as well as separateness and closeness in balanced ways while remaining emotionally connected to the others. In such relationships, people are able to be who they are without silencing or sacrificing their essential selves, and still allow others to think and feel differently without either one needing to change, convince or fix the other. Now this sounds to me almost as improbable as that Norman Rockwell dinner I've never been to, and indeed she says that this kind of intimacy is a quality that relationships approach to greater and lesser extents, not something that can be permanently achieved -- or permanently failed of, for that matter. But the interesting, and I think significant thing about this definition, is that it hinges upon what each of us must do in terms of our self definition and understanding, rather than trying to improve our relationships by getting other people to behave better -- an aspiration that many of us have often had, and never more so than at the holidays; am I right?

The ways in which tension and anxiety rise and fall in our complex family relationships are affected by many things; the three most important to recognize are first, the history and generational patterns that are inherited by the family; second, the degree of self-awareness and self-responsibility practiced by the participants; and three, the stress factors that come to the family system from the surrounding environment and from significant life events. These factors can affect relational functioning even when they are not held in our conscious awareness. For instance, if there is a history of estrangement between siblings in a family, even a new generation of sisters and brothers is likely to have stressed interactions. If the family has tended to deal with difficult matters by keeping secrets, new secrets will probably be generated when the old ones don't seem to matter any more. One child who begins to interact with clarity and integrity towards the parents will change the tenor of their relationship with the other children. The anniversary of a parent's death may be a difficult and stressful day, even if we don't overtly remember the date. And even celebrations such as weddings and graduations are events that challenge the existing balance of relationships, and bring stress into the system.

Lerner does not say this, but I want to suggest that by the same token, the annual recurrence of major holidays, such as Christmas or whatever tradition the family identifies with, functions in much the same way as significant anniversaries or life celebrations. Even if we try to ignore them and rationally dismiss their significance, their power in the relational dynamic does not go away. These holidays, with their focus on family, intimacy, memory, generosity, goodwill and peace, are a kind of cultural trigger, much like a collective grief anniversary. Their occurrence serves to heat up whatever issues already exist in our families, and to call forth the coping mechanisms that are most familiar to us, however unsatisfying or unproductive they may be. This is seen most clearly in the difficulty that many families have in planning the first Christmas after a major bereavement, such as the death of a matriarch or patriarch, or the death of a child. Believe in it or not, like it or not, when the holiday season comes around, we are more than usually vulnerable to our most intimate relationships.

Two interesting anthropological observations also give a clue that this is a moment of culturally special, sometimes called 'liminal' time, when relationships, particularly families, are stressed. One is the existence of that very cultural mythology I considered a moment ago. Both the Hallmark images and the nativity narratives offer poetically exaggerated models of family structures, suggesting that our society feels the need to tell itself stories about those kinds of connections; stories that we may consciously repudiate, but that operate behind the scenes to shape what we most deeply know about and want from our families. From the picture of the beaming Grandmother proudly presenting a platter of roasted turkey, to the vision of Mary kneeling reverently beside the manger cradle of her son, these stories and images subtly teach us the meaning of loyalty, pride, tenderness, and love. Such stories are called forth and interpreted by our collective need in the face of that 'set apart' holiday time. The second clue is the giving of gifts, which is an ancient and universal response to the presence of increased relational anxiety and tension. It is easily visible in other cultures, where we have no attachments of our own to the occasions, that presents serve as an outlet for tension, and as a kind of relational glue. The fact that gift-giving is such a central aspect to our holiday observances leads me to suspect that it is culturally a stressed moment for families.

Thus I would argue that it is no wonder that we seldom if ever actually have the kind of Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Ramadan or Thanksgiving gatherings that the cultural images hold up before us. Indeed, there is a sense in which the least likely time of the year for calm, connected, reflective give and take among family members is the holidays -- and yet it is the time that people most feel the imperative to be together with their relatives. Are we, then, condemned to endless iterations of the old feuds and the unfulfilled wishes for closeness, in addition to the real joy that our nearest relationships give us? Is all that is painful or unproductive simply the price of having, and being, family?

On the one hand, it's probably useful to say, at least in part, Yes. Yes, we are stuck being imperfect people relating to other imperfect people in the intensity of our mutual human needs for acceptance, understanding, and unconditional love. Our relationships will always be haunted by generational dynamics that we did not choose, but were born into; by the relentless demands of personal and cultural history; by the limitations of our own and others' insight. The more we are able to accept our own faults and those of others, the more we are able to relate as genuine people to genuine people, rather than trying to act out idealized roles we can never really achieve. The more we can lay aside the Norman Rockwell fantasy, and the people with the halos, the more likely we are to discover warmth and tenderness and moments of happiness in the actual circumstances of our own lives and families. I know for myself that at some point during the month of December, I always get tripped up by the romantic focus on children, and the sacred joys of parenthood. I know that such experiences are only a part of the vocation of raising children -- perhaps even a small part, percentage-wise -- and yet, at some moment when I least expect it, all the painful disappointment of Mark's and my struggle with infertility will wash over me with an intensity that only Christmas brings. At that point, I have a choice; I can let the bitterness of what my life has not given me drain the joy from the innumerable gifts that my life has given me, or I can choose to live in the world of what is rather than what might have been. I think that to make that choice; to choose imperfect reality with its compromised joys over perfect fantasy, is an act of religious commitment, and of faith. And I know that each time I come through that moment of darkness and out the other side, everything that is is sweeter and brighter and more precious to me, and I would not choose to throw away even the pain of my longing. And so it always is; as finite beings in a mortal world, if we are to have relationships at all, they will necessarily fall short of the idealized images painted on the lens of the culture. To accept that is to let go a great source of anxiety and tension.

At the same time, we do have options -- not options for how other people will behave, but for how we can respond to them in ways that promote health, choice, connection, and authentic intimacy. All people have their individually preferred ways of managing intense feelings, and all families have interlocking patterns for managing feelings within the family system. It is important to remember, Lerner emphasizes, that all management strategies have a purpose, and can be used constructively. It is only when individuals become stuck in particular roles that prevent them from creating and nourishing intimacy that a coping strategy becomes a problem. That feeling of 'stuckness' is often a clue; "Haven't we had this same fight, this same crisis, these same hurt feelings, this same silence over and over before, and here we go again!" Doesn't this particular uncle always drink too much? Don't this grandmother and grandson always get into an argument about music? Doesn't this sister always end up crying about something? Especially when the purported content changes, but the process of reactions remains the same, you are probably looking at a 'stuck' dynamic for managing feelings in a family system. It is intuitively natural to respond to such structures with protest and frustration; "Can't you two get along, just for a few days at Christmas?" "Do you really have to consume half a bottle of brandy with your eggnog?" "Must these children behave like wild animals?" These kinds of remonstrations, of course, are notorious for making the situation in question worse, for of course what they do is to increase the anxiety and tension that are driving the behavior in the first place.

It is far less intuitive to respond to this perception of stuckness by reflecting on the sources of the anxiety in the system, and on one's own role creating and maintaining it, but that is actually a much more effective approach. Just having one person in the system who is reflecting rather than reacting can serve to calm the dynamics of tension significantly, even when it doesn't seem that that person has done anything in particular. When one family member makes a conscious decision to practice the qualities of healthy intimacy, change can come to the whole system. Some of the ways in which one can do this practice, as suggested by the definition a few moments ago, include; talking openly about things that are important to you; clarifying your own boundaries and limits; expressing and acting out of both strength and weakness as appropriate; accepting that other people think, feel, and behave differently from you; and refraining from attempts to change, convince, or fix other people. These are practices that we can work on at all times with regard to any relationship, for they have to do not with changing others, but with developing strong selfhood, and the most profound intimacy is available in relationships with those who have the strongest sense of self. Lerner says that we move toward both greater selfhood and deeper intimacy when we:

Of course, none of these practices guarantees what others will do in response, and sometimes one person changing the way they have previously participated in the family's usual pattern will momentarily raise the anxiety and tension of the system. Nevertheless, a move toward healthy selfhood for one member is ultimately a move toward health for the whole system. Moreover, it seems to me that these practices have a religious quality to them as well. The challenge to state clearly our beliefs, values, and priorities, and then to keep our behavior congruent with these, and to accept the diversity of others' ideas, are disciplines called for by our faith commitment even if they were not part of the path of relational intimacy.

The good news about moments of heightened tension in relationships is that they are also moments of opportunity for change. One of the things that Christmas, and all the yuletide celebrations are about is the potential for, and indeed the inevitability of change; the seemingly miraculous ways in which novelty and new possibilities enter the world. The light that should have flickered out after a few hours burns steadily for eight days; the baby born in oppression and poverty grows into a teacher of unforgettable wisdom; things are sometimes so much more than they seem. And even our most intractable relationships can shift toward wholeness and genuinely nourishing intimacy as we strive, even in very small ways, to bring our authentic and centered selves to them. Not that we, or our relatives, or our family systems, will ever be perfect; they will not, and that's okay. But beyond the greeting card fantasies, there is more love and trust and joy possible in most families than we usually know how to access. Discovering that, the real possibilities for deeper intimacy in the relationships we already know best, is one of the great gifts of this or any season.

 

 

Opening words:

Our long, sweet autumn lingers late, and the waters are not yet sealed for winter.

Yet the days dwindle short and shorter; darkness comes early, and light is precious.

Ready or not, we enter into the festival season, perhaps humanity's oldest celebration --

the approaching victory of the sun.

Soon now the tide of darkness will turn, the longest night will pass, and the light again lengthen.

Here in these northern climates, we notice the lessening light,

even as we are grateful for the unseasonable warmth.

We deck our houses with brilliance, and the faithfulness of evergreens,

and allow a little of fantasy and sentiment to mellow our urgent lives.

Welcome it, then, this time of lights in the darkness of the year;

Let the ancient stories have their way with us,

and turn our hearts grateful and generous toward one another.

Here in this community of memory and promise, in this hour of reflection together,

let us pause, and be gathered into the mystery and wonder of this season.

Lay aside the hectic gaiety for a moment, the pressure and the rush,

And relax into the assurance of the earth's turning and the human will to rejoice.

For this we know; all the darkness in the world cannot put a single candle out,

And we, like all of humankind, are the bearers of flame, and the bringers of light.

In that assurance, we kindle this chalice, symbol of our heritage,

And add its luminous warmth to all the brightness of these days.

Chalice lighting

Hanukkah observance:

MJ:

Today is the feast of Eid Al Fatr, the last day of the Moslem holy month of Ramadan. We rejoice with our Muslim friends and neighbors in the accomplishment of their time of purification, reflection, and daylight fasting. May their lives be enriched by this act of dedication.

Today is also the seventh day of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light. Through centuries of bitter persecution, the candles of Hanukkah in the darkness of the year have summoned Jewish hearts to courage and new hope. Remembering the dedication of long-ago heroes, who rose up against their oppressors, and who used their freedom first of all to restore and re-consecrate their violated temple, the people have found a time of inspiration and rejoicing. Today we celebrate with them by kindling these lights with the traditional blessing:

KG:

Baruch atah adonai,

eluhenu melech ha olam.

Asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav,

Vitzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.