This is my homily (or at least close to what I preached) for today, the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C. The readings for today are here.
Just to add a comment: I think the parable of the Prodigal Son is my favorite story in the New Testament. Among the deacon couples with whom we went through formation, there is a lot of love for the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. I love that story, too, but this parable is even better.
Oh, one more comment: in the homily text, I use the word "prodigal" in a loose fashion. "Prodigal" means "extravagantly wasteful". It's unfortunate that the common name for this parable is (if understood literally) "The extravagantly wasteful son". That phrase is true, but as I try to explain in the homily, his wastefulness is hardly the key idea of what he did wrong. I don't think one person in a hundred, at least in our congregation, knows the dictionary definition of "prodigal", so I use it in the sense that I think most of us understand it.
This wonderful parable of the Prodigal Son teaches us about God’s mercy and forgiveness. But to get to that Good News, we must first consider what the younger son did wrong, and how the older son reacted to what his brother had done.
In the first part of the parable, the key point isn’t that the son asked his father to give him his inheritance right away – although that certainly was a bad thing to do. Nor is the key point that the son traveled to a faraway country. Nor that he was foolishly wasteful with his inheritance.
No, the key point of the first part of the parable is that the prodigal son broke off his relationship with his family – and especially with his father. He hatched a plan that would enrich him, without any care or consideration for what his plan would do to the rest of his family.
Perhaps there isn’t a person here this morning who can’t tell a story of someone in their extended family – a child, a grandchild, a parent, a sibling, an uncle or aunt –similarly breaking ties with the family, leaving behind a trail of pain and betrayal in the rest of the family. It doesn’t always have to involve traveling far away, as the prodigal son did in the parable. Separation from a family doesn’t always require physical, geographic separation. It’s more of a psychological and spiritual separation: a family member decides, within himself or herself, “I am not going to be a member of this family anymore. I renounce my family obligations. I am going to live my life in a way that says, ‘My family is no more important to me than anyone else’”.
That is what one of my sisters did when I was a kid, growing up in the 1970s. Perhaps someday I will have time to tell you her story. But in brief, when she was a teenager, she rebelled: she decided that she would not live according to the expectations and standards of my parents, and that she wouldn’t be a member of our family anymore. It caused unending conflict between her and my parents. Our family life was hellish during those years. My siblings and I, who were younger, didn’t know what to do. But we could all see that what my sister was doing was wrong. The situation with my sister left us with emotions of bewilderment and anger, and a sense of betrayal.
What happened in my family wasn’t really that unusual. I guess you could say, I had a prodigal sister during those years. Your family may have a prodigal nephew, or a prodigal dad. Perhaps you were married for a time to a prodigal spouse. The circumstances for your family’s story may be somewhat different than ours. But from what I have observed, what these families have in common is the suffering, the damage, the emotions.
We feel these emotions, and we go through this suffering, because we know that’s not how a family is meant to be. Our families are supposed to be whole. Our families are supposed to be founts of love. Our families are supposed to be places where the mother and the father love and support one another, and both together love and support the children, and the children grow and learn to be responsible and loving adults and citizens and believing Christians. And perhaps, someday, the children will become loving mothers and fathers. That’s what my parents tried to bequeath to me and my siblings. That’s what my wife and I have tried to bequeath to our children. And we hope our children will do the same when it’s their turn. But for any of that to have a chance to work out as we hope, every member of the family has a part to play; we’re all responsible to the members of our families. And whenever a member of the family chooses not to play their part – it hurts, not only them, but every member of the family.
In that light, all of us can understand the older son’s reaction in the parable. It doesn’t seem fair to welcome this prodigal son back into the family. But here we’ve come upon the great lesson of the parable of the prodigal son: severe punishment of family members may strike us as fair and just, but severe punishment, without the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation, is not God’s way. And of course, in the parable, the father really is God. Not only does the father – God - keep the door open for the younger son, he runs out to greet him while he is still far off; and when they meet, the father embraces him and decrees a celebration.
God’s mercy and forgiveness toward the prodigals in his family – which includes all of us - God’s mercy and forgiveness are generous and lavish beyond what we deserve, and even beyond what we can imagine. If that strikes any of us as unfair and wrong, then that’s a sign that our hearts aren’t fully conformed – yet – to being whom God wants us to be.
I’m happy to report that, no matter how trying my sister was, my parents always have kept the door open to her. They have always searched for a way to welcome her back, and try to make our family whole again. I’m certain this parable of the Prodigal Son has influenced my parents profoundly in determining how to treat my sister.
If any of us happen to be prodigal children in our families, let our prayer today be that, like the younger son in today’s parable, we find the grace and strength to ask the members of our family for forgiveness. And if any of us live in families with prodigal sons or daughters, let our prayer today be that God grants us the grace to forgive the prodigals, and welcome them back into our families.
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ReplyDeleteThe story of your sister is sadly common, Jim. I hope there is a happy resolution for your family some day. But in my experience, these things tend to harden with time. We often wait for friends and family to see the error of their ways without being able to see things from their pov.
ReplyDeleteWe are all prodigally wedded to our own grievances and in need of God's forgiveness.
Jean, thanks - I appreciate that.
DeleteShe is who she is. The rest of us are welcome to accept that and accept her, or not. I can't speak for everyone (I have six siblings - it's kind of hard to keep track of who feels what about whom), but I think most of us have come around to accepting her for who she is. For her part, she's no longer actively opposed to being a member of the family, but she's a member on her own terms. Of course, that's true for any adult.
The best takeaway from the parable imho is that the father never demanded an apology, never required the younger son to ask for forgiveness, as you seem to have expected of your sister.
DeleteI'm not getting that coming around to accepting people as they are is the same as expecting an apology.
DeleteAnne, you're touching on what is, in my experience, one of the great debates about the meaning of the parable: whether the offender is required to repent and ask forgiveness, or whether the father is modeling a free and gratuitous offer.
DeleteFWIW, my own view is: reconciliation shouldn't be an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime event; it should be a way of life, in which each of us is always attuned to the hurt s/he may be causing others, and is able to ask for forgiveness; and each of us is ready to forgive others. Ideally, reconciliation is a two-way 'transaction': "I'm sorry"/"I forgive you". I think that ideal is an attainable one, at least within some families, but still, our world is not ideal, and whether or not the ideal is attainable, most of us don't attain it in most of our relationships.
Regarding my sister: with the benefit of perspective and hindsight, I'm able to look back on that troubled era with some compassion toward her. Pretty clearly, she had some mental health issues, perhaps complicated by substance abuse. Unfortunately, my parents weren't well-equipped to deal with something like that; they tended then (and perhaps still tend) to view events on an axis of sin<->virtue, rather than mentally healthy<->unhealthy. (In the early days of the church's sex abuse crisis, I think this was a limitation/failing of some of the bishops as well; they viewed offenders through the lens of sinners whose sins could be forgiven.)
At any rate, even when my sister was going through those troubled teen years, I was able to stay fairly close with her. It was when I went off to college that we started to drift farther apart.
Katherine, this sentence implies that the “ prodigal” must ask for forgiveness and that the family should at least consider it. It is not just accepting someone as they are but having them ask for forgiveness and then deciding whether or not to forgive.
DeleteIf any of us happen to be prodigal children in our families, let our prayer today be that …we …ask the members of our family for forgiveness. And if any of us live in families with prodigal sons or daughters, let our prayer today be that God grants us the grace to forgive the prodigals, and welcome them back into our families..
It implies that all the “fault” is on one side. But in many cases, there is fault on both sides. Just like when a marriage ends in divorce. The father in the parable forgave the son without demanding that the son apologize, causing the “good” son to resent the father for showing unconditional love - unconditional forgiveness.
Admittedly, showing unconditional love and forgiveness is very hard for any of us to do. But I think that might be what God is asking us to do.
I don't think our offering forgiveness must be conditioned on the other party's offering an apology. But I think it's important that, when we offend, we apologize and ask forgiveness. I also think that people who live according to the code of, "I never apologize" are living contrary to Christian discipleship. In my view, forgiveness is central to Christian living, and that includes both "sides": requesting it and offering it.
DeleteFwiw, I let go, decades ago, any hurt feelings I might have harbored toward my sister for those years.
There's a "hard" estrangement where people go no contact, and "soft" estrangement where people just fade out. Put 1500 miles between them and family and check in once in a blue moon, and tell people that everything is fine. Only to find out that nothing is "fine" when they get a call that the person is deceased. Happened on my husband's side of the family.
ReplyDeleteSoft estrangement is maybe a whole different parable. My dad was the child of my grandmother's first marriage, so we were all tolerated by her second husband's extended family, but we never saw them after Gramma died. Only three or four extended family attended my parents' funerals.
DeleteI stated in the homily that geographic separation wasn't necessary to produce estrangement, but it surely helps. What I've seen in my extended family (including my immediate family when I was a kid) was "soft estrangement" which was not done intentionally, but happened as a result of people relocating far away when the dad took a job in another town. Our family did this throughout my childhood, as this was my dad's understanding of how one built one's career. (Honestly, he couldn't have had the career he had, had he stayed put in my hometown). But the moving about was hard on him, because he had grown up in an extended family which was very close, and it was hard for him to be away from his siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, et al. There is something asymmetric when someone moves away: the ones who move feel the separation painfully, but those who stayed put are able to move on with their lives.
DeleteI've seen a version of this asymmetry with COVID: people who stayed away from the parish for 2-3 years reappear on a Sunday, and for them it's a huge deal to be back. But for those of us who never left, it's not exactly overwhelming to have them back; honestly, in most cases, I hadn't realize they had been absent. Once they've managed to let me know that this is their first time back, I try to be effusive in welcoming them back.
That dynamic may shed some light on one of the parables from this past Sunday that nobody ever preaches about: the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep in the desert and goes out and seeks the single one who is lost.
The Congregational minister I've been listening to gave quite a long (20 minute) sermon on the 99 sheep and the role of shepherds at the time of Jesus.
DeleteLong story short, shepherds were viewed a bit like untouchables bc taking care of animals meant coming into contact with Unclean things. As a result, shepherds were hired to watch the flocks of others in one big herd, so others could do their daily work without breaking the law.
So the idea of going off to find the lost sheep, which likely belonged to another family, not only made the flock whole, but contributed to the well being of the sheep's family and thereby the entire community. A humble job which some reviled (as the Establishment reviled Jesus for consorting with sinners) but on which everyone depended.
I liked the idea of interconnectedness. No man is an island. And like that.
That is really interesting - I did not know that shepherds watched over several flocks at once. That little insight is a fine rebuttal to people (and I think there are some) who claim that the historical-critical method of biblical scholarship doesn't bear good fruit for the church.
DeleteJust my read, but the Jewish Establishment in Jesus's time seemed obsessed with compliance with the Law as a way to show God that they were worthy of a messiah to get rid of the Romans. That meant a smaller, purer church (sound familiar?).
DeleteJesus was constantly trying to upend this idea by restoring those thrown into the margins by rigid adherents and the overly scrupulous.
But reducing faith to a rulebook seems to be a stage in the evolution of many denominations and their leaders.
It's very hard to have a sibling that grieves your parents. Lots of people in that position try to be extra good to make up for it. I often wonder if that was at work with the older son in the parable and explains much of his anger.
ReplyDeleteJim, i assume that your older sister is in her mid to late 60s. So it’s taken her entire adult lifetime for her to be “accepted” by her family for being “who she is”. I don’t know what she did, and privacy and discretion mean that you should not share this publicly, in church or in this forum, but the hurt was obviously very deep for all concerned. I’m very sad for her, and for your family. I have no answers for these kinds of situations. Just prayers. Prayers ascending.
ReplyDeleteThanks Anne.
DeleteToday’s meditation from Richard Rohr
DeleteFather Richard believes that true forgiveness is only possible through a larger transformation of consciousness within us:
We cannot sincerely love another or forgive another’s offenses inside of dualistic consciousness. In our habitual, dualistic way of thinking, we view ourselves as separate from God and from each other. We have done the people of God a great disservice by preaching the gospel to them but not giving them the tools whereby they can obey that gospel. As Jesus put it, “cut off from the vine, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The “vine and the branches” is one of the greatest Christian mystical images of the nonduality between God and the soul. In and with God, we can love and forgive everything and everyone—even our enemies. Alone and by ourselves, we will seldom be able to love in difficult situations over time through our own willpower and intellect.
Nondual consciousness is a new way of seeing. Jesus said, “The lamp of the body is the eye” (Luke 11:34). Spiritual maturity is largely growth in seeing. Full seeing seems to take most of our lifetime. There is a cumulative and exponential growth in perception for those who do their inner work. There is also a cumulative closing down in people who have denied all shadow work and humiliating self-knowledge. This is the classic closed mind and heart that we see in some older people. The longer we persist in not asking for forgiveness, the harder it becomes because we have more and more years of illusion to justify. Allow conversion as soon as possible! It gets harder with time.
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/a-change-of-consciousness-2022-09-13/
While Christian life is a journey and a spiritual transformation that includes greater vision and understanding over time, I disagree with Rohr that it mostly about thinking, a transformation of consciousness within us. It is just as much a transformation of our behavior and our relationships with others.
DeleteIt’s difficult to grasp Rohr without having done a lot of reading - and thinking about - his work. The transformation of our behavior and relationships often occurs because of a transformation in our consciousness, in our understanding of dualism, true self- false self, ego etc. These changes often don’t happen without meditation and prayer.
DeleteA great deal of our behavior depends upon the situation, and not about attitudes, thinking and personalities.
DeleteIn the mental health system when I wanted to empower consumers to do the many things which they wanted to do in the mental health system, I created a leadership development program that brought them together and supported them in studying the system and working on projects together. It was modeled on a county wide program that brought leaders in nonprofit organizations together for the same purpose.
That new situation changed everyone's thinking and perceptions because it changed everyone’s behavior. It was not a training program. One consumer said to me that he had not learned anything new. I responded: “Where you able to do things that no one would let you do before?” The answer was, of course.
I was able to change a lot of things in the public mental health system because I made small changes in how the situation was structured that resulted in large changes in behavior but not necessary a lot of changes in thinking and attitudes toward the mentally ill.
Sorry I am very skeptical about a lot of consciousness raising programs. They may lead people to declare that their minds have been changed; I would ask are they really doing things differently?
Jack, Relationships in a business environment are very different from the emotions-laden relationships of family. From my observations over the years, most family relationship disruptions are not due to mental illness or addiction of a family member. Some, but not many. So changing behaviors of those who worked in your mental health professional environment would be a very different thing than changing in a family environment. But even in the professional world, raising the individuals involved own consciousnesses and self- understandings would help improve the professional relationships and the working environment.
DeleteI changed so dramatically after I spent years in regular meditation that people who didn’t see me regularly - generally Calif friends from my high school and college days - actually commented on it. I apparently had become a little bit nicer, and a much more patient person than the one they had known. Looking back, I am filled with gratitude that those friends stayed with me even when I often wasn’t very nice. I was very judgmental, which is still one of my most persistent sins. I still have to fight it. But meditation and becoming more self- aware has helped me change my behavior and improve some relationships a bit. I also changed political views after becoming far more aware of what those who are less fortunate go through, and thus became more compassionate. Even though I don’t agree always with the Democrats, they tend to support compassionate policies while the GOP is often deliberately not compassionate. The democrats tend to err on the side of helping people even at the cost of higher taxes, while the GOP always works to reduce social safety nets. Compassion is not in their vocabulary.
However, after a while I stopped the regular practice of CP, too “busy”. I retained much of the awareness I had gained, and compassion for “ the world” - including for poor women facing a crisis pregnancy, seeing for the first time the absence of compassion in much of the anti- abortion activism I had supported for 30 years and becoming reluctantly pro- choice - with limits. But I’m seeing a dawning of awareness in the pro- life movement finally. A raising of their consciousness about the crisis pregnancy can be, a dawning awareness among a few that the politicians they support don’t help and that the small, private efforts by parishes etc don’t begin to meet the need, and even an increased awareness among a few in that movement that being truly pro- life involves a whole lot more than outlawing abortion from the moment of conception.
But in the last 6 years I have had a very hard time forgiving my MAGA- supporting siblings. I am working on that now by returning to a regular practice of CP. in the meantime, I do not see them physically. Not hard with the sib in Arizona, but I also have a sister who lives 20 minutes away in Virginia. I still can’t bring myself to go to family events if she will be there. I don’t trust myself not to explode if she or her husband express MAGA views that I find too offensive, especially those that support racism. They would deny that they are racist, but they support a racist political movement by supporting trumpism. I can easily avoid my brother. I’m not sure that even a return to CP will enable me to forgive my sibs. The ego of my false self still wins out too often. The compassionate part of me was revealed through CP - an awareness of my true self. It had been there all along, but had been hidden because it didn’t match my family’s beliefs. I deliberately suppressed it at times in order to stay in good standing in my family.
Merton often wrote about the struggle to discover our true- self, so that we can understand and become aware of how we act towards ourselves and others - usually controlled by the false- self.
DeleteThis exposition is about Thomas Merton's development as a human being and the way Merton, in discovering his self, found a true Christian compassion for other human beings. What is most appealing about this topic is that these themes - the discovery of self and the challenge to love - are universal and confront each ofus daily. Thomas Merton knew well the confrontation between what he came to call the "false self," the superficial, "non-real" part of him, and the "true self," the self that Merton knew he was called to be. This struggle is explicitly portrayed throughout his life and writings.
The discovery of the true self can be broken down into three stages. These stages, however, are in no way separate from one another, as each ties into the other, affecting the growth process. The stages are: understanding of self, understanding of God through contemplation, and ultimately, understanding of others, which takes the form of compassion.2 According to Merton, we can begin to understand or know ourselves only when we view our essential identity as intimately related to God. It is through the act ofcontemplation that we come to understand this identity. Finally, at the highest level of self-realization, we fulfill our self by compassionately reaching out to others.
http://merton.org/ITMS/Seasonal/28/28-2Odorisio.pdf
In general, I don't let a person's politics affect my personal relationship with them. I don't see politics as the totality of who a person is; for most people, I don't think their politics are even very important to whom they are. I think 95%+ of people these days determine their political affiliations depending on emotional/cultural factors: whether they want to be on Team Red or Team Blue. Most people aren't even very rational in their political allegiances; if you probe what they really think about a situation, there is usually quite a bit of separation between their views and those of the politicians for whom they vote. As Anne notes, we may be seeing some incipient signs of this among people who reliably vote pro-life; the politicians for whom they have been voting are pushing legislation with which they aren't completely comfortable. (That disconnect between voters and their representatives is one of many symptoms of the disintegration of conservatism, but that's another topic.)
DeleteAnne, I can't begin to describe how much I admire your willingness to self-examine and to grow. Especially people at our stages of life - most of us are pretty set in concrete by now.
DeleteJim, how kind of you to include me in "our stages of life" - given that you are 15 or so years younger than I. So you are still middle age, and I am, well, old age.
DeleteJim, my self- estrangement from my siblings is not due to politics. I’ve never had a problem with friends or family who vote for the other party. NORMAL political policy differences center around issues like taxes, minimum wage, trade, tariffs, right to work laws, etc. There are no sure answers about these issues, and they do not usually involve essential considerations of good v evil. Starting with his first speech in 2015, Trump ran on a platform of promoting fear and hatred of immigrants, refugees, and non-Christians, especially those with brown skin who adhere to non-christian faiths. Since his daughter and son-in-law and their children are Jewish, he had to be careful there. The MAGA movement no longer even tries to hide its inherently racist positions, including in voter suppression efforts, and especially in promoting white, christian nationalism. They are quite open about their desire to replace our form of democracy with an authoritarian regime modeled after Orban’s in Hungary, which openly espouses white, “christian“ nationalism. This is one reason they now fight against letting the people bring up ballot initiatives and referenda - they fear losing in a truly democratic forum. So they have also accelerated their efforts to gain control of future elections, especially at the presidential level, to be able to legally substitute the popularly elected candidate’s electors with their own slate, as the trumpistas tried to do in 2020. They often can’t win honestly and openly, so they they fight ballot initiatives, and they are now trying to subvert the constitution.
DeleteIn my family, my brother is pretty openly racist, especially towards Latino immigrants, but in the past, my husband has heard him express racist views about black Americans, even though I haven’t witnessed that personally. After our son married a black woman, he hasn’t said anything in our presence, but we have only seen him twice in the last ten years anyway. The second time was when the family gathered for the funerals of our murdered niece and her husband. A bit ironic and tragic since they were murdered BECAUSE they were fighting hate and racism. My brother and his wife regularly forwarded right-wing anti- Latino internet viral email lies, until I asked them to stop sending it to me. Initially I tried to politely correct the lies with facts, including links to factual sources of data, but that didn’t stop the hate emails being forwarded. I finally told them to take me off that group list. They fully embraced the Obama birther movement. My sister and her husband did too, adding that Obama was truly evil - not just wrong on political issues, but evil. Of course I feel the same way about trumpism. It’s evil. My brother and his wife still occasionally slip up, and I get a hate-email forwarded from them.
continued.
DeleteMy sister in Virginia not only supports trump and the GOP, she advocates on Facebook about preserving the statues and memorials that honor confederate generals and leaders. She has no understanding - nor does she seem to want to try to understand - why honoring these men is honoring people who not only betrayed their country - became traitors to the UNITED States - they did so to perpetuate a moral evil. The Germans do not have statues and memorials honoring Nazi generals and leaders. We shouldn’t honor the confederacy and its leaders either. She doesn’t understand how much pain African Americans experience every time they pass a statue honoring Lee or Davis or other confederate leaders on their Main Street, or town square, with bouquets carefully laid at their base. She doesn’t understand that sending their children to schools named in honor of these men is pouring salt in the deep wounds that racism inflicts on them as part of their daily lives. Finally, many of those schools in Virginia, and in Maryland (we are south of the Mason Dixon line) are being renamed. Many of the statues are being removed from towns all over the southern states, or at least around the mid- Atlantic southern states. But too much resistance to this remains, even now. She doesn’t understand that the continued honoring of men who caused the bloodiest war for Americans in its history is honoring people who fought to the death to preserve a system and culture built on an absolute moral evil - the evil of slavery. This is especially hurtful for me personally, since I have a very loved daughter in law whose ancestors were slaves in Jamaica, who has experienced racism her entire life. How do I explain to my beautiful African American grandchildren, obviously also with slave ancestry, that their great aunts and great uncles honor these men? Ironic that both my brother and sister and their spouses also wrap themselves in the flag, seeing themselves as true patriots. Yet they support a party that has minimized the horror of the assault on the nation's Capitol and Congress - the first time in history that it was an assault by Americans. They honor Robert E Lee, #1 in his West Point class, who became a traitor to his country in order to preserve a system built on evil. My sister and her husband are “devout” Catholics, wearing their faith on their sleeves along with their allegedly pure patriotism, supporting a man who is not only totally amoral, the most corrupt president our nation has ever had, but a man whose political views represent a betrayal of both American and values and the gospel. So, while I’m working on forgiving them, it’s hard. And forgiveness on my part may require continuing a physical estrangement for the rest of our lives. I may someday be able to follow the example of the father in the parable of the prodigal son, but I’m not there yet. They are in their 80s now and my sister’s husband is in his 90s.
This is not an estrangement rooted in DEM v GOP as normal politics as you seem to think. But I do think that it is tragic that millions of Americans, all those “nice” people, still support this movement - which is NOT what the GOP nor conservativism once stood for. It’s tragic that these “nice” people are more concerned about their taxes than are concerned about their political party not only promoting racism - it’s not a deal breaker for them because they are white- but is working to subvert the constitution as well.
Both my grandfathers were wasteful, foolish and self- centered; their children got away from home as quickly as possible.
ReplyDeleteMy mother’s dad was a profligate who regularly cheated on both his wife and his mistress. My grandmother and he separated. As a Catholic before the days of non-fault divorce, she would not give him a divorce. That also enable her to collect alimony.
My mother left home at eighteen to marry my dad. Her youngest sister joined the WAVES as soon as she became of age.
This grandfather was in no way generous with his money. My mother’s other sister became pregnant out of wedlock, then died of a rare disease, leaving her daughter to be raised by my grandmother. He would not contribute a dime to his granddaughter.
We continued to have relations with this grandfather who married his mistress after my grandmother died. When his mistress died, my mother took care of his house. He had to retire early because of a stroke. At his death, my mother said she had long had no feelings for her father.
My dad’s father physically abused his wife and children. Dad escaped his anger by leaving school after eighth grade and becoming a coal miner. Another son joined the air force.
One daughter left home to become a telephone operator in New York City. Those were the days when telephone operators played vital roles in making the system work. She had a nervous breakdown, and retired on disability from AT@T. She spent a lot of time in mental hospitals and had many electro-shock treatments for depression.
Her depression lessened in later life; she lived in my grandmother’s house after grandma died. (This grandfather had died earlier of black lung disease since he had also worked in the coal mines.) She took herself off medications but became very isolated and paranoid, not receiving most family members.
I had always got along well with her, but I lived too far away to be of much help. Eventually one of my cousins and her daughter convinced my aunt to go to an assisted living home. That worked well for her; I visited her regularly when I went to see another aunt after dad’s death.
I was very lucky that my parents, as the eldest children of these self-centered grandfathers, were able to establish a marriage that assisted both grandmothers while maintaining amicable relationships with both grandfathers. As a child I had very little awareness of their poor behavior. My Polish grandfather loved his grandchildren even while he cursed his wife and children in Polish which we grandchildren could not understand.
Jack, it sounds like both of your parents were pretty remarkable people to be able to overcome those family backgrounds. You probably know better than the rest of us, thanks to your professional training and experience, that some children aren't able to rise above their dysfunctional family histories.
DeleteIn my very brief time in therapy, I was asked to make a family tree and to color code individuals who were abusive, mentally ill, suicidal, addicted, etc. Seeing four generations of nut jobs lit up like that on one page made a lot of things clearer. It also made me more aware of those who managed to break the cycle and how to pay attention to how they lived.
DeletePeople are able to rise about their dysfunctional family histories when they are in a new situation. My parents had each other plus a lot of personal skills they exercised in family situations.
DeleteBoth elected not to cut themselves off from their families but to work very well with the people whom they could, e.g., the two grandmothers, sisters and brothers and deal firmly but not antagonistically with the two grandfathers.
I think a lot of problems continue to occur when we demand that people like the two grandfathers have to admit that they are wrong, apologize, etc. when they change their behavior. Rather just let them adapt a little to letting the new positive relationships among others develop as they did the relationships of my mother and dad to other family members.
For all my parents' problems, I am very glad we didn't end up in foster care. I'm sure my brother and I will always struggle to live like "normal" people and fight various urges to "cut loose," as Dad used to say. But the gift of old age is that you just don't have the energy for generating or dealing with drama.
DeleteWhile my grandfathers may have caused problems for their offspring, there is no evidence that either had parents or siblings that were dysfunctional.
DeleteI know a great deal about my maternal grandmother's family. It was very large, spread across Pennsylvania. She had brothers and sisters living in our area. No evidence of any alcoholism, mental illness, divorces, etc. in that group. Very solid families.
I know a fair amount of about my maternal grandfather's family since several branches lived in my hometown or nearby towns. Again, no evidence of any alcoholism, mental illness, divorces etc. in those families.
A simple explanation for my maternal grandfather is that he became a very successful foreman supervisor in the local steel mill, led a very stressful life, and had a stroke in his sixties. I guess he became addicted to women rather than alcohol to manage his stress.
In my paternal grandfather’s case, both he and my grandmother came to this country in their late teens or early twenties. They had little extended family in our area. My best guess is that grandpa and grandma had very little support from parents or siblings as their family grew. Grandpa may have been overwhelmed with his rapidly expanding family; he certainly engaged in a many different kinds of work to keep things together.
My mother as the oldest child had done most of the cooking and housekeeping since her early teens. Dad had gone to work in the coal mines after grade school. So, they had years of experience in doing most of the activities that were need for their marriage. In my maternal grandmother's family, they saw many successful marriages. They spent a lot of time with these people before I came along.
Mom especially helped things by being involved in dad’s interests. They both liked motorcycles. After I came, they often took me to visit the farm. I was the first boy grandchild and a favorite of my grandmother and grandfather. When dad took up fishing, Mon joined him.
They bought a house in another town before I became school age. They both put a great deal of work into remodeling that house, and then into building a cabin. In all this activity they were very independent of their families and any of the fallout from the grandfathers’ dysfunction.
Lord, we're a motley crew. Happy to know y'all.
ReplyDeleteStanley, ;)
DeleteI suppose that intrinsic to transitioning to adulthood is redefining one's relationship to one's family. Leaving the nest, no longer being under the authority of one's parents, and then finding a new way of relating to parents and siblings. Obviously, romantic relationships, marriages, divorces, new parenthood - these all complicate the networks of relationships that form the "plumbing" of family life.
ReplyDeleteAnd then, over time, the older generations in a family die off, and their influences and contributions go with them.
I once attended a family reunion in which one of my father's cousins, a woman who may have been in her 60s at that time, expressed frustration that my generation was not stepping up to take ownership of organizing and hosting these large extended-family get-togethers.
But some of this disinterest on the part of my cousins (and siblings, and me) was natural: as younger generations come of age, they have families of their own, and make relationship and marriage alliances with other families. The webs of family relationships change with each generation, and each generation must tend its own webs.
Isn’t it a bit odd that people are expected to love their own birth family members and stay close to them forever? Even after adulthood, when individual personalities, interests, and values diverge widely and our birth family members often seem less like family than friends do, if the criteria for true friendship include compatible interests and values?
ReplyDeleteEven though my siblings have different personalities and interests, there is an indefinable *something* there. We know the same Mom and Dad expressions and figures of speech. We were a musical family, and know the same songs that we grew up listening to Mom and our aunts sing. I suppose we didn't actually grow up in exactly the same family since there is a wide age spread. I am the oldest, with brothers three and six years younger, and sisters ten and eighteen years younger. For some reason I am closer to my sisters, even though my brothers are closer to me in age.
DeleteOne of the great gifts of my life was that my grandparents were farmers, and my dad was a steelworker. In our three generations we experienced the great transformation of the world economy from agriculture to industrial to service economy. Neither my parents nor my grandparents understood much of my life other than I had a Ph.D. but I was certainly able to understand and value their lives as much as or even more than those of colleagues in academia and mental health. I would really have missed out if I had grown up as the son of an academic or mental health professional.
ReplyDeleteMy dad worked as a Sears store clerk, an hourly worker at Dow, and as a maintenance manager at Dow Corning. He loved hearing stories about my work experiences and, for somebody who read only one book in his life ("Ivanhoe," which he hated), he offered some pretty sanguine advice for dealing with the collective insanity of lit curriculum committees.
DeleteI wish he were alive to talk to The Boy. He is so much like Dad, but without the demons.
Not everyone grows up with the same kind of family. Three of my grandparents died long before I was born. I had extended family in LA but never met most of them. My parents were highly educated for their generation, with my mother earning a BA from UCKA in 1931 when it was rare for women to go to college. My father had a Master’s in chemistry. They both read lots of books, but neither offered much in the way of wisdom.
ReplyDeleteUCLA = UCKA
ReplyDelete