Miki Dedijer

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Becoming a family servant

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In a few days, a dozen or so men are gathering at our farm around a man about to become a father.

So I’ve spent some time pondering what this moment asks of us, now that his life seems to be taking him away from a certain singularity awash in endless possibilities, towards an obligation to be tethered to the bundle of ties that is family.

Now there’s a word, family, pregnant with hidden meaning, fully birthed only by a willingness to wonder some about its ancestry.

Family, from the latin famulus, is originally an adjective meaning servile, or a noun signifying a servant or slave. We may receive this as a negative, this posture of submission, but I suspect that there’s more to it then what the knee’s jerk suggests. As the verb famulur, it indicates someone who ministers, tends to or waits upon someone or something.

And so there is an action concealed within the pale lifelessness of the noun, something being done that is of consequence to the one being acted upon.

The servant here is not a single person submitting to the will and command of others of higher standing. Nor does it ask of us that we resign ourselves to tending to the whole without recompense, agreeing to become gradually impoverished by our  ministrations, forever bound to an insatiable hunger.

When we first tread across the threshold of parenthood, we’re not entering the vaguely heroic realm of sacrifice, rising every day to lay our gifts down at the altar of the child. Not as I understand it. It’s more relational than that, less ridden with resignation.

It seems that as you become a parent, you take on a relational obligation and mutual agreement to serve whatever and whoever needs sustenance. Not sacrifice. Surrender.

For this man coming to our farm, his heart expectant, this may be his pregnant partner. It most certainly will be their newborn child. At times a grandmother or uncle and others of the fold. The family requires the attention of all members onto all members. It ceases to be without this collective willingness to serve.

And in entering this web of relations with the stance of a servant, we soon discover that it extends far beyond our child, our partner, ourselves. For what sustains us, is serving us, is family.

So I wonder if family is only born from our willingness to bow our backs and kneel together in servitude to all that calls on us for nurturance. As a man then, we marry into family by a pledging our allegiance to matrimony, the condition of the mother. This is the honor bestowed on the one entering wedlock, to become a servant, not master, in the household of life, human or otherwise.

Our children are not exempt from this daily practice of family-making.  They too are asked to learn this willingness generously to serve, so that they may one day come of age, knowing that beyond the immediate family, there’s a larger community fed by their willingness to give what they are able to part with, and some of what they relucantly know they must give up for life to continue.

Playlist of your ancestors

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Music is a bridge to our ancestors

You can wander on the arch of a tune towards the loved one’s you’ve lost.

For me it’s Marian Anderson’s “Coming through the rye,” a song my father would theatrically sing to us as children. Or my grandfather’s songs that he learned in Sweden’s endless spruce forests, during months of tending earth kilns for coal.

Our family has some twenty or more of these songs in our family jukebox.

You will have your own playlist of the ancestors, of course.

Carry it with you like a medicine bundle of songs to help your heart remember the full reach of your family tree, swaying to the rhythm of time passing.

Making humans who serve life

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There was a time in your ancestry, either within living memory or well beyond depending on your particular lineage, when a child was raised not to be all that she could be, but to serve life.

Raising a child like that takes a lot of cultural savvy. The songs, the stories, the games, the rituals, the traditions, values or ceremonies all foster an understanding of what this service entails. The watershed moment comes at adolescence, when the initiators pull childhood from under the child’s feet, to make room for the adult to emerge, ready to serve.

All this, and a lot more, is to make humans who know how to obey life as a part of life, a welcome if troublesome sidekick, not the main act. A human like that doesn’t emerge on her own. She has to be made by those who know what is required of a human in a world that wasn’t made for us alone.

Here there is little requirement for a child to develop autonomy, mastery, control, efficiency or individuality. These self-serving qualities, when left untempered or glorified, are anathema to life itself. They rupture the relationships on which the child, the parents, and the fabric of the community depends. They also endanger the web of natural relations on which the village depends.

Cultures that still know how to make humans, and remember why they must be made, gather around the shared task of fostering qualities that affirm the demands of life itself. You’ll find that in these communities, to the extent that they still remain intact, quite a few characteristics occur again and again from one earth-based lineage to another.

Here parents are intent on preserving their child’s love of life, their sense of awe and excitement. Children are taught to be respectful, generous, thankful, humble, attentive, helpful. And they come of age in a community which through its actions, models these qualities day-by-day, from one generation to the next.

Attachment beyond mom and dad

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Attachment theory places a child’s sense of belonging at the breast of the mother, or in the lap of the father.

But we’re all born with a need for attachment to a home that is far vaster than the nuclear family.

Imagine instead an attachment theory that knows the pain of being uprooted and adrift, and so honors the child’s need to be intimate with the place to which she’s born. This acknowledges the need of every child to plant her little being in a wild home of familiar forests, streams and constellations.

Envision a theory that bows deeply to the ancestors who breathed your child into life, and can speak at length about the devastating poverty of holding but a few drops of one’s rich bloodline.

See the theory stretch to also wrap around your child’ need for attachment to community, a diverse social ecology in which to develop all of her gifts.  Here the theory acknowledges the ills of isolation and fragmentation, and grows its reach outwards, to the embrace of an extended family and a thriving village.

As it is, you and I may rate ourselves as securely attached in theory, yet feel curiously homeless. Well if you do, it’s of little surprise. To truly come home, our children–and ourselves–must attach to all of life.

Your child’s gift holds the family together

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What sets every family member apart is what holds the family together.

This is an old ancestral understanding. The strength of our relationships grows from our willingness to honor, celebrate and cultivate our differences.

Every child has a unique gift, talent, passion that complements the gifts of others. These are the variegated threads of a vibrant community.

Skokomish tribal leader, Gerald Bruce Miller says it like this: “Don’t teach your children all the same thing. If you teach them the same thing, they won’t need each other and the world will fall apart.”

Diversity fosters interdependence. Uniformity unravels the web.

How to plant your child in community

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I’ve heard from many parents who dream of planting their children in community.

Like them, maybe you too have raised your head and looked around and seen nothing but fragments of a village, shards of a tribe, threads of an ancestral tapestry. You think at times of moving your family to where community seems more alive.

Hold on.

This seeing is not your vision of an elusive elsewhere. It may be your call to become a craftsman, a weaver, a mapmaker, an archaelogist, a neighbor, a villager of the place in which you now find yourself.

Follow the faint trail through the woods to the clearing where elders, parents, children, friends are gathered around the warmth of a shared longing for togetherness.

These are a few of the possible signposts and skills that will lead you there.

  • Find the existing hubs–Where do these erstwhile villagers gather? What tasks, activities, possibilitites draw them together? Where are they today? Some places to look include Waldorf schools, an outdoor program, a parent group for homeschoolers, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, dance class or your local yoga center.
  • Reach for the low hanging fruits–Who else around you is ready to weave? Someone who also sees what you see. Who else is ready to carry this longing towards a becoming? You’re looking for somene  who also feels the bewilderment beneath the anger, the grief beneath the bewilderment, the love beneath the grief.
  • Seek diversity–The village is guilded–keep an eye out for people with disparate gifts and bring them together in a social ecology that thrives through diversity. Call in the musicians and visionaries, the elders and anchors, the space holders and facilitators, the nature nerds, the musicians, the ancestral trackers and storytellers, the survivalists and permaculturists.
  • Root it in family–Community asks that we’re willing to extend our families and acknowledge kinship. Take time to consider your family values, the traditions you honor, and the culture you wish to extend and deepen. Make sure the community you seek to create aligns with your core values.
  • Call in the triad–We can’t do it alone. It starts with conversation, a coming together of a few embers. Sit by the fire with no more than two other weavers. This is your seed pod, a triad of local visionaries who hear the call of the ancestors. Soul activists who are willing to act for the sake of our children, and those yet to come.
  • Stay with it through conflict–Conflicts are the inevitable gifts of deepening relationships. Decide early on how you wish to resolve misunderstandings, hold differences, and grow from your disagreements.
  • Lay a foundation–There are conversations we rarely have, and questions we may not explore with our friends or neighbors. Yet they are foundational to the process of seeding community. What makes you come alive? What hurts and saddens you? What do you want for your children? What shared values can you agree on?
  • Celebrate the seasons–Nature is not an ideology. You can’t debate the winter solstice or the spring equinox. And so the seasonal shifts are wonderful invitations to gather in recurring celebration to honor the circularity of our lives.
  • Start small–Set a low threshold for your gatherings, and make it easy for other families to say yes to your invitations. Light the grill and gather around a pot-luck. Meet up at the beach for a playful afternoon of shared discoveries. Set up a net and have a volley-ball tournament.
  • Honor the long arch–You will likely not see the community of your dreams emerge in a year or two. But don’t let that blind you to what you have. A community of three is a good thing. Tend it’s growth through your enjoyment of it. Trust in time, and celebrate all the surprises that emerge and accumulate through your staying put, staying with.

There is so much more, of course. But these are all good places to begin, if you wish to plant your child in community right where you live.

Along the way it helps to remember, as Peter Block says, that every time we gather, we model the world we wish to create.