There’s Something I Discover Through Observing

I watch how others raise their children. How men talk about their wives and wives their husbands. How they encourage – or discourage. How they seem to be doing it well, or – not so much.

I observed families together in a little village when I was in Lebanon, a few years ago. They were families of Islamic faith and I remember noticing and marveling within how close they seemed, even when walking in the streets, sometimes a mother and two children and a father – all hand in hand, strolling through streets and narrow alleys. The love and respect shown was so obvious. It seemed different, startling, not something I’d seen as much – or at all, at home in Canada in public displays of affection and bonding.

I remember reading about other cultures before I visited in Kenya some years back. And there too I saw families living in ways that showed closeness, love, respect and inter-dependence in ways that I think have been lost to us in the West, with our hyper-focus on iindividuality andn independence (rather than the inter-dependence we need), in our know yourself, do-your-own thing society, often with the casualty and loss of family nearness, wholeness, in bonding and cooperation in shared living.

In some ‘clan-based’ cultures, brother will fight with brother but if you intervene, brothers will join to fight you as a threat. Families will fight families but they make up a clan, and if the clan is threatened, they will cease their inter-family hostilities and turn together to ward off the danger they share. And clans will join in unity as whole nations, when the nation is threatened, and go back to almost tribal warfare with each other when they have occasion to do so and the wider, larger threats are past.

Knowledge of family and clans and how they work in such cultures is key to understanding when there is the danger of giving offence or showing threat in some way, in sharing faith and passing on new information and new ways of any kind. There are patriarchal cultures still, and matriarchal ones, too, extant in our times. An understanding of clans and families is key to understanding many of the stories and their corollaries, in the Old Testament Scriptures. It was also by families that generational vocations were passed on, in kingships and priesthoods, in the important and lesser trades and contributions that contributed to making farms and villages, cities and nations.

Of course there are exceptions and we talk about the break-down of the family in our own nation, though in some places still, perhaps, some rural values still reflect the older values and traditions with respect to family care, respect, loyalty and obligation, all of which is what some young people want to reject and escape when they leave for the city. It’s also what they wish they could go back to, as they mature later in life, or as they experience the cold and aloneness that can so often be their experience, even though living with and among so many in urban centres. But they can’t return, can’t get back to the old days, the old ways in the old familiar places, for any number of reasons.

 When I was growing up, our small farm was adjacent or near to seven other small land holdings owned by close family members. We were all uncles and cousins, siblings and parents, side-by side in life; all of the families were market gardeners. I could be encouraged or disciplined by any of the uncles and aunts, depending upon what trouble or goodness I got into, in proximity to or on our or their land, within their sphere of influence.

We already have experience of family, in our early and formative years and during the brief time allotted to us on this planet.  Recently, I celebrated a siblings seventieth birthday; I’m not far behind. My mother is in her 94^th year, as I write. "Too soon old . . ."

It’s important to reflect on our family and upbringing, though often we don’t want to do so. We all have wounds, some of us very deep wounds. The chance or deliberate words of a father or mother, or a sibling we carry in our deep heart, and they affect us greatly still. “You’ll never amount to much.” “You’re bad – lazy, stupid, too much of a dreamer . . .” Thank God for positive words too. Have we retained them as well? We need to learn to forgive as well as to welcome the fact that we can receive forgiveness.