What would we look like?

I was just talking to a strong brother who had returned from visiting friends. These folks have come out of a number of church traditions to form--alas-- another "local church", complete with ruler/preacher and meeting house. This is simply because, as my friend put it, "it's what they know." And there's the rub. We tend to reproduce what we know, even if we intentionally leave what we know for good reason. It is hard, incredibly hard, to do something that is actually different.

Perhaps we have to step outside of our Christian skins to do this.

A question for the student: Let's say I am part of a large extended family. My mom has ten brothers and sisters, my dad has ten brothers and sisters, I have ten brothers and sisters... and we all live in the same town. How would you expect to see us expressing and maintaining our family relationships, passing on our family traditions, and so forth? What would you see us doing?

Would we show up at a cousin's kid's ball game and make fools of ourselves over a five-year-old hitting a ball off a tee? Would a dozen of us show up at cousin Luke's to celebrate his new swimming pool? Would most of the crowd descend on Mom on her birthday to her complete delight and the general dishevelment of her nice little house? Would the traditional Friday afternoon ritual be, "Can I sleep over at Matt's house?" Would I and four of my cousins corner my unemployed brother-in-law and quietly force some cash on him for his house payment? Would the granddaughter introduce the new boyfriend to Grandpa before going to the prom? Would we have the occasional family reunion, an exercise to play ourselves into exhaustion on what always turns out to be the hottest weekend of the summer? (Who schedules these things?) Would you find my ten-year-old son on our back patio learning the intracacies of dominoes from his grandfather and great-uncles? Would there be eternal arguments over who does the turkey for Thanksgiving this year; last year's was dry, I'm sorry to tell you. Would we crowd the hospital waiting room when Dad had his operation... or when little Julie was born? Would the first grandchild to get his college degree be cheered by a large group in the cheap seats, despite the admonition to "please hold your applause until the end"? Would every kid begin every school year hearing from his new teacher, "Oh, yes. I know your sister/brother/cousin. You're going to do fine. I know what your mother expects from you."

OR...

What if I told you that every Saturday night, Grandpa selects a movie at the local theater and our entire clan goes to that movie? Seven o'clock showing. We meet in the theater lobby, pay for our tickets, the kids run around a bit, then we troop in to see the show. For 90 minutes or thereabouts, we laugh together, or cry together, or sit on the edge of our seats, depending on the content of tonight's feature. Then the lights come up and we all troop out to the parking lot, pass a little small talk about the movie on the way to the car and say, "See you next Saturday!" That's it. That's what we do.

I would suggest that one of these families will still be close twenty-five years from now.

Door Number One or Door Number Two?