How can I stay relatively sane, centered and loving during all the upcoming gatherings with my bat-$#*& crazy, dysfunctional family?
One of author Elizabeth Gilbert’s favorite teachers once said to her “If you think you’re spiritual and evolved and enlightened, go home for Christmas.” Can I get an “Amen”? A handful of us live the Norman Rockwell dream of peaceful, perfect turkey and stuffing holiday dinners filled with laugher, mutual admiration and encouragement. The rest of us, well….we don’t. We pop a valium, hold our breath as we knock on the door and pray for the best….which is usually 4 to 5 hours minimum of tense smiles and avoiding conversations that bring up old unresolved resentments and conflicts.
So, what would Jesus do when Uncle Bill starts his crazy political rampage? Or when Grandma asks with disgust ‘how could you do that to your body?’ looking at your favorite tattoo? Or when your sister judgmentally scolds you and says you should better mind your children? Or your Dad asks “When are you going to get a real job?” Or any number of much worse scenarios, passive or blatantly aggressive? Seriously, WWJD?!?!?
I think Jesus would invite us to follow him, as he does so often in the gospels. Never once did Jesus say following him would be easy, in fact, quite the opposite he said "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24) In other words, Jesus says “those who want to come with me must say no to the things they want, face the hard, painful realities of life, and follow me.” So we must say “no” to our deep, lingering desire to angrily pop Uncle Bill square in the nose, to tell-off Grandma and to spitefully ask our sister where does she get off. Instead, Fr. Ron Rolheiser says that:
“Jesus, invites us to something higher, and he models that for us in the way he died. Jesus took away tension by transforming it rather than by transmitting it. What Jesus does for us is comparable to what a water-purifier does. A water-purifier takes in water containing dirt, toxins, and poisons. It holds the impurities inside of itself and gives back only pure water. Jesus, as the Lamb of God, took away our sins and purified us in his blood not by some divine magic but, precisely, by absorbing and transforming our sin. Like a water-purifier, he took in hatred, held it, transformed it, and gave back love; he took in jealousy, held it, transformed it, and gave back affirmation; he took in resentment, held it, transformed it, and gave back compassion; and ultimately, he took in murder, held it, transformed it, and gave back forgiveness. That’s the Christian design for taking tension and resentment out of our lives.”
Our calling is not just to admire what Jesus did and how he lived but to imitate it; to follow him. It’s easy to love those who love you back, right? Jesus never calls us to be a doormat or endure abuse, buuuut….he did say to choose love in the face of those who aren’t very loving to us. Our doctrine of the incarnation tells us that our touch is Christ’s touch…Christ’s healing, forgiving, transformative touch. Hugging some of our family members with sincerity can be hard, but with Jesus, we CAN do hard things. But while doing these hard things we have to remember to be gentle with ourselves too and sometimes count our effort to even try as a success.
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