My Forever Family

Sometimes it is in the moments of our greatest happiness that we must also confront our greatest fears and our greatest pain.

This has been a big summer for my family, full of triumphs.  Our foster son graduated from high school.  More importantly, he was accepted into one of the  most prestigious Universities in our state, and was able to secure sufficient financial aid to guarantee that -- so long as he works hard -- he will be able to complete all four years there, preparing him for the career of his choice.  He's transitioning out of foster care and into independent living, which is a goal all of us have worried about and worked hard for.  In doing so, he's beginning to accomplish all the highest hopes and dreams that every parent has for a child.  We are so proud of him.  We are so excited about what he's accomplished so far, and what he will accomplish going forward.

As a family, we achieved another extremely important goal.  As the culmination of a nine-year-long process of finding Göran's birth certificate, establishing his identity and connecting with his birth family, we were finally able to go on a trip abroad that we have been longing to make almost as long as we have been a couple (over seventeen years)!  Thanks to that little piece of paper -- a birth certificate! -- we are able to defend Göran from arbitrary denial of health care, employment, and travel.  It grants us civil and legal rights that we both need in order to take care of each other.  By traveling abroad, Göran and Glen were able to experience the mind- and soul-expanding possibilities that can only come from experiencing the world from an entirely different cultural perspective.  Also, I was finally able to introduce them to a branch of my family that has been an integral and important part of my life.

This was what was most significant to me about our trip.  I can't even begin to say how important it was to me to connect with my uncles, aunts and cousins, and to revisit places where I learned some of the most important things about myself, and people who helped me learn those things.  I wanted my family over there to meet my husband and our son, to see and know who and what I have become with Göran and Glen.  I wanted to meet the new members of my family over there -- children and spouses of cousins -- and see who and what they have become.  That is why I desperately wanted the language to be able to communicate with them more freely and fully, why one of the most important aspects of our trip was to be able to speak Finnish, to be able to tell about my husband and his struggles, and our son and his progress, and to hear and understand the changes and journeys of my family members over there.  I had to (wanted to!) struggle with a sense of loss too...  The fact that these people who are so important to me have been so distant for twenty-three years!  I never again want them to be so distant for so long.

For me, this was all only the latest chapter in my own journey of personal integration -- bringing all the different, disparate strands of my life, all the things that have remained separate and unreconciled, back together into a harmonious whole.  Body and soul, mind and spirit.  Family is about that, about integration.  Every member of the family is unique, with individual experiences, perspectives, and history.  This is true, regardless of the nature of our relationships.  A father and son share so much in common, and yet can be so different from one another as to be mutually incomprehensible -- to sometimes make war on each other!  A brother and sister can have the same mother and father, and yet look and think and act and feel so differently from one another that they might as well have come from different planets.  So let's not even begin to get into the differences that separate an African-American, Memphis-born man whose family have been in the U.S. for as long as there has been a U.S., and a Finnish-American Utah-born Mormon whose roots in this nation are no longer than five generations and as short as one generation.  And yet, despite that we are each -- all of us, brother, sister, mother, father, lover, spouse, child -- so different as to sometimes seem virtually alien to one another, there is no joy in remaining apart, remaining alien to one another.  Our only joy is in finding unity that binds us through our differences, so that our differences become incorporated into our sense of who we are.  So that our difference makes us stronger, more compassionate, more powerful.

There are times when I feel Göran and I have achieved a unique kind of unity, a bond so intense that when he is pricked, I bleed.  And yet, a couple, no matter how close, is constantly in movement, constantly experiencing growth and change.  Each part of the couple is experiencing his or her own growth and change, separate and unique from his or her partner!  So closeness in a relationship is never something you take for granted.  It is something you always work on, something you always build.  Something that requires constant course-correction, constant listening, constant communication!

So those seemingly innocuous things that we do...  Going for a walk.  Playing a game of monopoly.  Sitting next to each other in church.  Crossing the Atlantic and visiting a different country!  It sounds like fun!  And we have in our culture -- especially in our puritanical American religious cultures -- a tendency to denigrate "fun" as not serious, as unimportant.  But it is in the simplest of moments -- often the times when we are being the least serious -- that we are doing the most important work.  We are creating bonds, connections and a love that forges us together, that turns the chaos of difference into the harmony of family.  So a family summer full of momentous and important and innocuous and seeming unimportant things -- graduations! parties! family reunions! summer vacations! -- it's joyful and fun and Oh So Important.

But there was a moment a few days ago, when all of that seemed to come crashing down.  Why?  Because everything that matters in life is a product of faith.   And faith is invisible.  Faith is like Peter walking on the Sea of Galilee.  What keeps him from sinking into the waves and drowning, even within reach of his Savior?

Family is real, because we believe in it.  Because we proceed in trust that it exists, that it has value, that we can count on it.  And there are a million things out there in the world -- in that big bad world full of grandeur and wonder and excitement and truth and love, but also full of hate and falsehood and ennui and blindness and degradation -- there are so many things out there that will tear us down and undermine us and make us believe that we are unworthy and less than.  There are things out there that might cause us to doubt that the things that really count in life, that really matter are even really real.  The world is hard that way, which is one reason we need families to help take care of us and to take care of.  But even our greatest resource, our families, can support us only through that act of faith which enables us to believe in them, to trust that family is real.

So my son, who has been our son for three years, is facing not one but two or three enormous transitions.  He's starting this whole new chapter of his life where he starts college.  But he's also moving out of the house (into a college dorm).  And those transitions are extremely difficult.  Anyone who's seen a kid go off to college knows how painful that transition is, how you wonder if anything will ever be the same again.  How you wonder if you're actually losing someone.  When of course you are not!  But it can feel like it!  And it feels like it because in those transitions we are reminded that the ties that bind us are built of simple things!  Summer vacations!  Bike rides!  Sharing a meal!  And relationships -- like all the most important, best things in life -- are invisible!  So transitions are scary.

And my son is making, not just this college transition that is made by so many other kids in so many other "normal" families.  He is making a transition that not very many kids make -- out of foster care.  So he wonders.  Once the state-sponsored obligation is over, once there's no longer a file full of documents in some bureaucrat's office saying that we have some kind of formal relationship with each other, does that mean we are no longer family?  Our son was beginning to be afraid.  He was beginning to mourn the potential loss of everything that has come to mean so much to him.  And at our -- at his! -- moment of greatest triumph!

So a few days ago, we had another one of these conversations where he was disconsolate.  Terrified.  He doesn't know if what we have is real or not.

Now I can only think back to that very first moment, when he walked into our house for the very first time, and our hearts melted.  We felt bonded to him almost from the very first time we met.  We knew, by some invisible, interior, but nevertheless incredibly powerful means, that he was part of our family.  And I came to know that we would be a family literally forever.

And so my reassurances to my son become a sort of testimony-bearing.  My telling him what I know and how I know it.  And an admonition to him to have faith, to be faithful, to act in accordance in the world with what you know to be true deep inside, with that invisible place known as the heart.

To be a family and to love is an act of faith.  It is to face the chaos of reality, it is to face difference and very real conflict, and it is to face doubt.  It is to stand up and face everything that tells you you are not a family, you cannot possibly be a family and it is to say, No you are wrong.  Our love is invisible, but it is real.  You may not see us as a family, you may not see a family in us.  But we are.  And you can't prove it to anyone but yourself, ultimately.  It is not real to those who don't share faith with you, who don't keep faith with you.  But that does not ultimately matter, because it only is to those for whom it matters most.

Now, see, this is why in my humble opinion all the fussing and fretting and whining and campaigning by all those good, decent, respectable religious folks against gay marriage and against gay family is indicative of one thing.  And it is not indicative of their faith.  No, this kind of campaign does not come from a place of faith.  Because if my love for my spouse and our love for our son could possibly touch them or take anything away from them, to me that suggests that they never had anything to take away in the first place.  If, after all they have done to deny me my sense of family, they have failed to deprive me of the love and faith and hope that it takes to make a family, how on earth could our mere existence take an iota away from them?  To me this says that they are overcome by the world, that they have already lost faith in the very institution that they claim to value most.  And in their desperate attempt to shore up something they don't actually in their heart of hearts really believe in any more, they are attacking me and my family.  And they are doing so in the worldly realm that they apparently think matters most.  They're trying to make us unreal as a family by legislating us out of existence.

From the moment I came to realize that family is an act of faith, I became free of the anguish such a campaign ought to cause me.  Because I began to realize that precisely because the things that matter most are invisible, precisely because they are a matter of faith, a political, legislative campaign cannot touch me at the innermost, most vital place where I am and move and have being.  Sure, they can make things difficult for us.  They could take things away from us.  But we can only lose that which is most important to us if we let them implant doubt in us.  If we stop believing.  If we let their lack of faith become our own.

It's not that outward things aren't important.  I support and will continue to support legal, same-sex marriage for the same reason I long for harmony within my family.  I will support it for the same reason I learned Finnish and hungered to communicate with relatives living on the other side of the globe.  I will support it for the same reason I support political campaigns to deal with hunger, to educate the disadvantaged, to protect the environment and to promote peace and safety.  I support same-sex marriage because I long for reconciliation of all the differences that make us unique so that we can in some sense be a unity, so that we can in some sense be one.  Not just as individuals in individual families, but as individuals in a single great human family.

I have faith in that too.

Pictures!

I promised to post a few pictures from our vacation in Scandinavia, so here they are...

This is me with my parents at the Helsinki Cathedral, explaining to them my theory about the church's iconography.

Göran and me on the train.  We resorted to train travel in southern Finland, but rented a car the last half of our vacation while visiting family in North Karelia and driving to Lapland.

One of my favorite drinks is piimä, a kind of Finnish buttermilk.

In Stockholm, I found this interesting steeple on the Engelska Kyrkan (English Church).  No, not the Angel Moroni.

The reason we went to Skansen, a big open-air museum in southern Stockholm, was so I could see the summer house of Swedish scientist and visionary Emmanuel Swedenborg.  It was in this simple, one-room cottage he had many of his visions and held many of his interviews with angels.

 

This is how I attended the royal wedding celebration of Princess Victoria of Sweden.  If you know anything about what it means to be a Finn, you will understand what a magnanimous gesture this was.

I waited for four hours to get this picture of Prince Daniel's hand in front of Princess Victoria's face.

There was a lot of schlocky romantic stuff all over Stockholm, as part of the general wedding festivities.

This photo was taken at midnight, behind the cabin where we were staying in Varislahti, Finland (where some of my mother's family are living).  This is what it looked like from about 11 p.m. until 2 a.m.  Then the sun would rise again.

Here are the menfolk, all watching football.  (This match was England vs. Slovenia.)  In Finland, the men were all watching the World Cup, and the women were all talking about the Swedish royal wedding.  Göran and I were comfortable in both worlds.

Göran and our nephew Christian, who specialized in making goofy faces for the camera.  We called it "the face."

We timed our visits with my cousins, uncles and aunts in eastern Finland with the big midsummer's celebration known in Finland as "Juhannus."  The religious significance of "St. John's Day" has to do with the fact that midsummer comes exactly six months before Christmas, and John the Baptist, the prophet who prepared the way for Christ, was born six months before Christ.  The pancake-like "lettuja" are a special Juhannus food.  On Juhannusaatto or St. John's Eve, Finns light a big bonfire and celebrate late into the night.

It's been twenty-three years since I've had a chance to visit my family in Finland.  Growing up, we would go every two or three years and I would spend the whole summer.  It was very emotional for me to see beloved aunts and uncles and cousins again, and to meet cousins' kids for the first time.  See that big smile on my face?  I'm very happy in this picture.

My cousin Mika is one or two years older than I am.  He was the cousin I probably spent the most time with on those long summer visits.  It was so good to see him again!  (And meet his wife and kids!)

On our drive through Lapland, we had to be careful to watch for reindeer.  They don't seem to pay much attention to cars, and routinely meandered down the middle the road, stopping traffic and attracting photos!

This photo was taken at midnight in Kilpisjärvi, Finland.

I had this brilliant idea that I was going to go for a swim in the Arctic Ocean.  I changed my mind after wading into it and realizing how freezing cold it was.  (I would have done it if there had been a sauna...)

On our way back from Lapland, we stopped in North Karelia again to spend more time with family.  Here I'm holding music for two of my cousins, Pekka and Kari.  They were playing from the top of the old mine tower in Outokumpu, as part of the city's summer music program.

Our last night in Finland, Göran and I went for a walk in a part of Helsinki we hadn't explored yet, and we ran across this advertisement.  I'm not sure how I feel about Helsinki promoting itself as a destination for gay tourists.  Maybe I would feel better about it if Finland would grant equal marriage rights to same-sex couples, like its neighbors Sweden and Norway.

We loved the restaurant Zetor.  The desert we had there -- fried cheese melted in cream and topped with cloudberry jam -- was worth the price of the plane ticket to Helsinki.

So this was the gay bar we checked out.  It seemed to me like there were a lot more lesbians than I usually see in American gay bars.  When Göran and I were dancing, we (or I should say he) had a lesbian cheering section.  This woman who had really had about six too many was kind of hitting on Göran.  She seemed really offended when I interposed myself between them, and took him by the hand and introduced myself as his husband.  (Göran, on the other hand, was really relieved.)

OK, so here's a perfect example of what left me feeling kind of ambivalent about gay pride in Finland.  Why is it advertised in English?  Why call it "Pride" instead of something more logical and native, like "Homo Sisu"?  Maybe it's just me, but it almost makes it seem as if gay pride is put on for the benefit of English-speaking tourists.

This stained glass window in the Tromsø Cathedral (in Northern Norway) sort of perfectly captures some of my theological ruminations during our trip.  Finland was converted to Christianity by Swedish ristiretkeläisiä, by "crusaders" whose main method of persuasion was the sword, and who used Christianity as an arm of the state, to undergird the authority of the Swedish monarchy.  I found it fascinating that this Norwegian Church, instead of portraying a crucified Christ like most other European churches portrays a triumphant Christ at his Second Coming.  At the top of the window, the hand of God is portrayed, with light streaming down to represent God's interventions in human history.  Below the Christ (not visible in this photograph) lies the carnage of human war and genocide, and Adam and Eve, as representatives of humanity, reach upwards to receive Christ again as the restorer of peace and love.  I'm not a fan of the way Christ is physically portrayed here.  He seems too abstract and ghost-like to me in this portrait; I want a Christ who is concrete and physical; I want the reality of the eternal realm breaking into the ephemeral mortal...  But I still like the basic idea behind this image.  If I were an artist designing a church window, it is almost certainly the theme I would choose.