Beating Like Some Disembodied Heart We Hear: Family, Family, Family
Posted: Monday, October 31, 2011
by Christofer French
Rain Dancer Associates, LLC
“Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way."
Now that my fellow hard-headed Israelites is a statement about how proud we are of ourselves. But somehow, we must be proud to stay together and call ourselves a tribe, and call ourselves family. There is a primitive hardness that forms because of family.
But human attraction is continuous and marvelous and it overwhelms tribe and language and ethnicity. Our bursting populations and urbanization change the concept of family. In many ways family has been minimized in that we all contact so many others in our lives. But in a way, just because we contact so many, family has become more important in certain significant ways.
This is all, so theoretical, aren’t we all glad that God holds this great vast Field of Mercy over our Families? From century to century Family transmogrifies and people who used to hate the hill people from over there, are now related to us. Urbanization does indeed and Modernity splash new colors all over family. But family is still there.
How Can We Make Family?
Imagine it just a moment if you would.
Family.
Good loving family. The sweetness of little ones, the utter feminine qualities that melt your tough mindedness. The purring qualities of family at rest. Laughter, cuddling, sharing, confiding.
Family is exactly what human life is about. Organizing our resources with loved ones, and then taking in someone who once was not family, but now is.
You know what? There are things that wear away at Family.
War inhibits the growth of family. Destructive alcohol inhibits the growth of family. Jealous rage inhibits the growth of family. And so, even as Family, we somehow have to mourn. But because it's family we are forced to live with each other and reconcile inimical forces.
The forces that stand up against you, and declare that mighty human social states actually mean something. Stop and ponder. Family at once burdens us and blesses us. Family is forced upon us.
"You mean you're my brother? I guess you have to love me. Maybe I should think about the possibility that you might be the only one at my death bed."
The Destructive Aspects of War
All of those forces want to stand up, organize themselves, like a Civil War line, and what do they do?
They say “Oh my Brother, over there, please kill me with an errant shot, or completely miss me, so that I can discover you on the hard and red battle ground. Either way ---- We will be family.”
When I hold my brother in a wounded line, I say: “At least we were here together today.”
Family is the collected souls who because of births have spread themselves across creation.
Stop.
Women oh, Women.
Don’t be superior now. Women. Yes, you women. You feel so superior because you think you are above military combat, but below it all, dropping your heads so that we can all escape the wonder of once in awhile desolation. We cry and we look around for once in awhile destruction and how we present the left over love of human habitation. Women have been saved by war, and thus families have been saved and preserved.
And yet, women and creation, you are our tents and beds and covering blankets, reaching for what keeps us all together. In a few years after a war, family gets reformed. Relationships have changed.
Thank God for women and how they affect family. Without the civilizing nature of women, conjealing relationships, making little kids behave, family goes a begging. Rubbing the harsh negatives off miserable men, somehow family gets formed around these rough creatures. And men that aren't so rough imbue the group with strong hearty caring.
Here’s the story.
From the Residue of Battle Comes New Family
Who Got Killed When No One Was Expecting?
Family is not the group that got killed that night. When no one was expecting.
Here’s what family is in 3000 BC or now.
Your face is in the grass. It’s cold. The noise of guttural victory has gone away. Minutes pass. Your cold face looks over to the right. It’s your cousin. Your Mom’s side. His eyes are looking at you.
Then, over there there’s a bunch of females. Some drunk attacker wandered by and they put a jaw bone in his head.
Listen. Over there. Your Mom and Dad are hugging each other.
After an hour’s sleep you pause.
Why Are We a Family?
What it feels like is that there’s a bunch of us and you, lying in the small little garden. While it appeared that you all got bludgeoned, you didn’t.
Why are we family?
Because God’s love splashes all over the tiny village, bringing us all up into loving sweet, warm and welcoming life.
Our enemies are over there, about a hundred feet away in a stinking hole.
And That’s What Family Is
Our guys manage to lacerate the remaining, but somehow, there he is, one guy, who, though he was our enemy, is now some friend, or distant cousin, or just some guy, who, today --- I am not willing to kill.
And that’s what family is, when God is holding his breath, and we are trying to construct smiles, and with little swearing statements of commitment, we tell each other that we little hill people are going to love each other.
And we drop our weapons in the dirt. And we lose our hate in the air of rising in the morning.
So there.
Did we come from that Group Who Didn’t Die, But Now are Glad They Lived?
One hundred years from now, there is this one final thing called family. And we look at ourselves like wonderful creations from a whole other bunch of places. And then we say. Family and Love feel good together because they never go away!
Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way." God said that to us, but maybe some day, the pacifying nature of pure civilizing hearts will be such that our stiff necks will move more easily to the right and to the left, and embrace all that we call family.
And though we don't completely like our sister, or have had too many arguments with our Dad, and really love the rest of the group, regardless of how these individual relationships play out, there is that big bass drum softly pounding away like some disembodied heart. It is beating, beating, beating: Family, Family, Family.
http://bible.cc/acts/7-51.htm
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)So much substance in this article regarding family....I can relate to this article. The extended tentacles of a large family are strenuous, even if you are only three in the nuclear pod. So much could be said, but I won't ...great job.All of my life I have been intrigued by the fact that you may not get along with family completely, but they are yours, and you are theirs. Friends can be as close as family, but they may not be at your death bed. There is something magical about sexual union, and how fantastic children are born to people who don't care. And yet, if there is enough family all kinds of lacks and mishaps and bad fortune can be covered for by the powerful glue of family. Thanks for your notice.
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