Who Is Your Family?
Opening Words
May the door of this home be wide enough to receive all who hunger for love, all who are lonely for friendship. May it welcome all who have cares to unburden, thanks to express, hopes to nurture. May the door of this house be narrow enough to shut out pettiness and pride, envy, and enmity. May its threshold be no stumbling block to young or stained feet. May it be too high to admit complacency, selfishness and harshness. May this home be for all who enter, the doorway to richness and a more meaningful life.
—Siddur Shir Chadash, Youth and Family
Check-in
Sharing by participants in this covenanted UU community.
Topics
First Reading
Family is the first community that most of us know. When families fall apart, as they are doing now at an unprecedented rate, those who suffer through the breakup often lose faith not only in marriage but in every human bond. If compassion won’t reach across the dinner table, how can it reach across the globe? If two or four or seven people who share house and food and even kinship can’t get along, what are the prospects for harmony in larger and looser groups, in neighborhoods, cities, or nations?
—Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting For Hope: A Father's Journeys
Second Reading
Popular psychology has implied that if one’s intimate relationships are in order, life will be fine. But the situation is more complex than that. People cannot be whole and healthy unless they connect their lives to something larger than their own personal happiness. Freud postulated a great need for sex; I say our greatest human need is for love. We need to be reconnected one with another.
—Mary Pipher, The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families
Focus Questions
- Who are the people in your family? What are your family values?
- Who do you show up for? Who shows up for you? Who do you have faith in?
- Who are the people who know your secrets? With whom do you take the risk of relating?
Likes/Wishes
Invitation to participants to share thoughts, feelings, and issues that came up for them during the experience of this session.
Closing Words
A long time I have lived with you and now we must be going separately to be together. Perhaps I shall be the wind to blur your smooth waters—so that you do not see your face too much... Perhaps I shall be a new mountain—so that you always have a home.
—Nancy Woods, Many Winters
Last updated on Tuesday, March 6, 2007.
