Superficially, a family might look like an accidental gathering of individuals called together by the chance meeting of a man and a woman who fell in love and wanted to express the depth of their love in procreation. At a deeper level, a family is an incredible intertwining of multiple streams of ancestry, memory, shadow, and light. Each home hosts the arrival of history and assists the departure of new destiny. The walls of the home contain immense happenings that occur gradually under the subtle veil of normality. Though each family is a set of new individuals, ancient relics and residues seep through from past generations. Except for our parents and grandparents, our ancestors have vanished. Yet ultimately and proximately, it is the ancestors who call us here. We belong to their lifeline. While they ground our unknown memory, our continuity bestows on them a certain oblique eternity. In our presence we entwine past and future. Virgil underlines the beautiful value of “pietas.” It means much more than duty; it is prospective as well as retrospective. Though Aenaeas is utterly committed to his huge and painful destiny, he is concerned for his son as well as his father.
The loneliness and creativity of being a parent is the recognition that family is inevitably temporary. Good parenting is unselfish and, to encourage independence in a child that has received unconditional love, acts to reinforce the sense and essence of belonging. Nothing, not even departure, can sever that intrinsic sense of belonging. Children are created to grow and leave the nest. Family provides the original and essential belonging in the world. It is the cradle where identity unfolds and firms. Such belonging outgrows itself. Home becomes too small and too safe. The young adult is called by new longing to leave home and undertake new discovery. The difficulty for parents is letting them go. In a certain sense, parents and children never leave each other; this is a kinship that no distance can sever. However, in a substantial sense, part of the task of maturity is to become free of one’s parents. Clinging to parents causes a destructive imbalance in one’s life. One never achieves an integral sense of self-possession if one’s parents continue to dominate large regions of one’s heart. To grow is to come to know their fragility, vulnerability, and limitation. There is great poignancy and pathos in parents’ difficulty in letting go. Kahlil Gibran says, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.”
Parents have such incredible power to confirm and influence the inner life of the child. Identity is fashioned in the inner life. The child’s sensibility is like a sponge. It absorbs everything. Without knowing it, we drink in the voices of our parents at that stage. We have not yet developed any kind of filter to sift the creative from the destructive. There is no such thing as perfect parents. Without wanting to, and often without knowing it, all parents leave some little trail of negativity for their children; this belongs naturally to life’s ambivalence. There is never anything absolutely pure in the valley of tears, but we still love our parents in their imperfection. As Robert Frost says, “We love the things we love for what they are.”
Children come here without knowing where they are landing. A little child has no power. In these times, terrible stories are emerging. Children have been violently abused both mentally and sexually. Outwardly, the home appeared normal, but it was in fact a quiet torture chamber. Sick and violent parents have turned their innocent little children into targets of their own demented psyches. Such violence marks a person for life. It shakes the inner ground of the psyche. This violation of the innocent is one of the most sinister forms of evil. It is a deeply troubling question. Why would a kind and loving divine power allow the innocent goodness of a child to be delivered into the hands of such twisted violence? It is a massive spiritual task for those who have been abused to love and reclaim themselves. Abuse wants to turn the abused child against itself. To learn to break this inner reflex of violence is a task that can be achieved only with the help of a wise and caring healer and the kindness of grace. The abused child must learn to see himself as lovable by loving himself, and, in time, others. In a home where this love and space exist a child has a wonderful introduction to life. You are encouraged and your gifts are awakened. For years, you will be able to live from the perennial nourishment of this creative, initial belonging. You will be able to embrace and inhabit other styles of belonging demanded by the different stages of your journey.
