“Family” is a very different, a very difficult concept for us in this culture today. We have been raised,
many of us, in a society of uniracial, one-denominational families where fathers were the
“breadwinners” and mothers were the “housewives,” where colors did not mix and women as a class
were economically dependent. Divorce was socially unacceptable. Women were legal minors.
Childbearing was a basically uncontrollable process. It was our ideal of the perfect home. But, as a
result, many lived in loveless, violent homes from which there was no escape.
We mourn the loss of those ideal structures and, for many reasons, rightly so. The number of single-
parent homes is on the increase. The number of merged families leaves children with two part-time
families rather than one full-time family. Childhood poverty is multiplying at an alarming rate in the
richest country in the world. Marriage, in too many cases, has become a very tentative venture. We are
inclined, as a result, to see earlier forms of family life as perfect, despite the fact that those periods,
too, produced great suffering, even great sin. People lived in loveless marriages all their lives. Children
were unwanted, ignored, abused and deprived. Women and children were abandoned with impunity,
made poor or forced to cope with countless infidelities. Whether the ideal was every truly real
becomes a question of great social import.
At the same time, we have been so concerned about the emergence of various forms of modern
families—biracial, single parent, merged, mixed, blended and single sex that we have too often lost sight
of the underlying essence of human relationships. When we pray, “God of Love,” we forget that God’s
love takes no form, has no boundaries, knows no barriers, requires no systemic litmus test of propriety.
We forget that God’s love is unconditional and so requires the same of us. We have forgotten that only
love can make a family.
But the psalmist knows better when he writes, “As parents are tender with their children, so God is
gentle with those who believe” (Ps.103). The psalmist talks only and always of the god who is tender,
the God who brooks no obstacles to covenant, the God who bars no color, no status, no social caste,
no sex from the fullness of life because this God puts love above law. The psalmist makes us examine
every relationship for the quality that maintains it, not the legalities that define it or the structures
that shape it.
If we are to become God’s family, the human family, we must surely do the same, praying only that
every family, whatever its form, will have the resources it needs to live in dignity and in love and the
spirituality it needs to live with integrity, tenderness and laughter always.
--from 25 Windows into the Soul: Praying with the Psalms by Joan Chittister (Benetvision)
CLICK ON BOOK COVER TO ORDER
many of us, in a society of uniracial, one-denominational families where fathers were the
“breadwinners” and mothers were the “housewives,” where colors did not mix and women as a class
were economically dependent. Divorce was socially unacceptable. Women were legal minors.
Childbearing was a basically uncontrollable process. It was our ideal of the perfect home. But, as a
result, many lived in loveless, violent homes from which there was no escape.
We mourn the loss of those ideal structures and, for many reasons, rightly so. The number of single-
parent homes is on the increase. The number of merged families leaves children with two part-time
families rather than one full-time family. Childhood poverty is multiplying at an alarming rate in the
richest country in the world. Marriage, in too many cases, has become a very tentative venture. We are
inclined, as a result, to see earlier forms of family life as perfect, despite the fact that those periods,
too, produced great suffering, even great sin. People lived in loveless marriages all their lives. Children
were unwanted, ignored, abused and deprived. Women and children were abandoned with impunity,
made poor or forced to cope with countless infidelities. Whether the ideal was every truly real
becomes a question of great social import.
At the same time, we have been so concerned about the emergence of various forms of modern
families—biracial, single parent, merged, mixed, blended and single sex that we have too often lost sight
of the underlying essence of human relationships. When we pray, “God of Love,” we forget that God’s
love takes no form, has no boundaries, knows no barriers, requires no systemic litmus test of propriety.
We forget that God’s love is unconditional and so requires the same of us. We have forgotten that only
love can make a family.
But the psalmist knows better when he writes, “As parents are tender with their children, so God is
gentle with those who believe” (Ps.103). The psalmist talks only and always of the god who is tender,
the God who brooks no obstacles to covenant, the God who bars no color, no status, no social caste,
no sex from the fullness of life because this God puts love above law. The psalmist makes us examine
every relationship for the quality that maintains it, not the legalities that define it or the structures
that shape it.
If we are to become God’s family, the human family, we must surely do the same, praying only that
every family, whatever its form, will have the resources it needs to live in dignity and in love and the
spirituality it needs to live with integrity, tenderness and laughter always.
--from 25 Windows into the Soul: Praying with the Psalms by Joan Chittister (Benetvision)
CLICK ON BOOK COVER TO ORDER
| WHO DEFINES FAMILY? |
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