First Christian Church of Medina, Ohio

Peace in the Family - Pat McDaniels

Webmaster's Note:  Below, please find the text of the speech that was given at the annual Veteran's Day program, which was held at St. Francis Xavier Church on November 9, 2006.  Enjoy!

Hello – I’m Pat McDaniels.

I’m here to talk to you about peace in the family.  I’ve been asked to do that because I’m a therapist who works with families. 

First, I want to tell you what therapy has done for families…at least to a certain degree.  We’ve botched up the entire works!

Yes!  Here’s what we’ve done… We’ve taught adults that all of their unresolved issues stem from being raised in a pathological family…and we’ve taught parents that they must, at all costs, avoid doing damage to the fragile psyches of their offspring…or else they too will be labeled “pathological” when their children are grown, and are in therapy.

Want to know what I think?  I think adults should be coached to forgive their parents rather than to blame them….being human, after all, is quite an ordeal. 

And, I think parents should be encouraged to worry more about their child’s character than his psyche.

Have you noticed, increasingly over the past 10 years, that it’s “cool” to be rude?  That it’s perfectly acceptable to lash out at people who make us wait; who slow us down; whose opinions differ from ours; whose needs deplete our resources?

We have a crisis of values and meaning in our culture today.  Compassion, self-sacrifice, humor, tolerance, civility, manners and resiliency are often not being taught.  The junk values that many children learn at home are no more nourishing than Diet Pepsi, and are as bad for their souls as candy is for their teeth. 

In the 1930’s there was an enormous economic crisis.  Today we’re dealing with the poverty of consumerism…meaning we never have enough.  As one writer put it, we’re “thirsty in the rain”.  We have overestimated the benefits of stress-free lives, and oversold  the positive effects of smooth, non-challenging childhoods.

What, you might well ask, does all this have to do with Peace in the family?  I would suggest that Peace has its roots in Character.  And that family is where we must learn…must develop Character. 

Perhaps it’s time to get interested in restoring communities and rebuilding the infrastructure of families.  Maybe we need to take back our streets, and our living rooms.

How do we begin that process?  I wonder if it might be helpful to look at what worked in the past.  Nostalgia, which is the clinical term for homesickness, comes from the Greek root that means “the return of home”.  This is what I often see in therapy.  People who just want to have a home….a place of safety, “a soft place to land” as Dr. Phil would say…a place where expectations are clear, where connection is more important than acquisition, where conversations take precedence over put-downs and snappy one-liners.

Where faith in God is the guiding principle, and forgiveness is free for the asking.

I’m not suggesting that we romanticize the past…but that we learn from it.  That we, as a culture, ask ourselves, “Under what conditions did the families of fifty years ago flourish, and how can we re-create those conditions in the current culture?”

The God of my understanding has ordained families to be the first agents of peace.  Living peaceably together in the world is contingent upon the qualities of character learned within family.

May God richly bless your families with ….Peace.

[Based on excerpts from “The Shelter of Each Other” by Mary Pipher]

Last modified: 01/21/07

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