Family can be hard, and that is proof of how much family matters
Today, Thanksgiving 2023, really matters.
This week, some of my attention went toward re-building my scamdemic ravaged family.
I have been planning for this week since March -- contacting family members and asking them to get this week into their calendars for us to be together.
By practically any measure, our family should have fared better than most.
But the truth is, by every measure we failed, and for three years we have failed.
I hope desperately that my family is below-average in this regard, and that the ways we failed miserably, over and again, for three long years, are not indicative of most American families.
Because if that is not the case, then Covid is so much worse than illness, or communist takeover, or business destroyer. Corona communism succeeded at ripping apart the heart of the most basic social institution, the family.
Last night, I hosted a video call to ask one thing: How will you be rebuilding family and community in the days and weeks ahead? I shared what I have been doing and heard from others as well.
If this question is not on your mind, I very much think it must be.
Winning the fight that you already won, and hearing your concession from some boneheaded relative cannot be your Thanksgiving goal.
You are better. You saw through this. You are an exemplar and capable of moving the hearts of men. You need much more aspirational goals for family time than that.
As far of the mainstream of American society is concerned, the nonsense is behind us. In your life, you can lead. You do not have to lead the entire world. But you are needed to lead the world around you as you know it.
It is time to lead.
Your family needs you to lead.
Your community needs you to lead.
The holiday season is gold for building community and for leading.
Americans, often so focussed on themselves, soften up a little and some will even turn their attention to others.
It doesn't have to be another year of "The new normal."
Now is a time to even hang out with that cousin who you can hardly stand.
Last night, I made an argument for why, but you do not need all the intricacies of that argument.
It is enough to know this: better is needed of you, and today is the day to bring better.
Sometimes the social institution with the greatest ability to create the most rich human connection can be the social institution that can create the most painful division as well.
Too many of us in our disposable era have dispensed cheaply with this.
Too many of us have written off human connections that carry the potential for incredibly rich relationships because they were "uncomfortable" in some way.
That discomfort of family, that ability to get under your skin is basically the proof, basically the point that they are such valuable territory for such rich relationships.
Please do not be so weak that you will burn the uncomfortable bridge rather than recognize the potential of the discomfort and persevere through it.
American life once left no other option than to get along with family.
Today, many, following less-than-wise counsel, treat family, and other rich relationships, again, as disposable.
It is no surprise to me that so many practitioners of homosexuality that I know, are unlikely to find themselves among family during the holidays, but are likely to surround themselves with people who float in and out of their lives cheaply and whom they call "family."
Do not follow that model please.
That model is on the cutting edge of where America is being pushed, both in this regard and in many other regards.
The youthful, adult male serial practitioner of homosexuality is the closest thing to an American cultural exemplar that we have in this era, and that exemplar is a very bad one.
That is the lifestyle choice, in more than a dozen points of comparison, that American popular culture most pushes us toward.
Am I attempting to be hateful of those who practice homosexuality?
No, not particularly, in fact some see through the ruse, and want nothing to do what is above described.
On this Thanksgiving, as you pick a fight about something stupid, rather than look for common ground in a trying relationship, keep in mind the exemplar that you are following, when you do that.
Meanwhile, immigrants that I know, live two, three, and four nuclear families (sometimes more) in the same home, or same building, or same compound, sharing resources, sharing wisdom, building unbreakable bonds, and yes, weathering some prickly parts of those relationships too.
These overcrowded homes are easy for the rest of us to make fun of.
The truth is, we can each often learn a lesson from such emphasis on family.
If you are apart from family this holiday season, do your best now to make sure Christmas is different, or that next year is different -- even if that means reaching out today to someone who would never in a thousand years expect to hear from you, let alone to hear a kind and cheerful word from you.
The world seeks to leave each one of us isolated and easy-to-destroy individuals.
We cannot let that happen.
We cannot fall for the ruse.
Part of that is saying "no" to the division and insisting on greater unity, even in the most difficult of times, even in the most uncomfortable of times.
People are tired of the new normal, and need someone like you to step into a new role: a servant leader in the family, a servant leader in the community.
You won the intellectual debates of 2020. They came at great cost. Ten, maybe twenty percent of the public remain true believers. Do you really need the ones closest to you to bend a knee and kiss your ring at Thanksgiving? I ask that you please not make that this day.
Go for coffee one day and hash it out for three hours, if that conversation is really that important to you.
Today, let this day be about building the bonds of the family around you, the institution with the richest raw material for human relationship we can have.
I sometimes wish it were easier than it is, but you know what, it isn't, and that is why some of those truly meaningful relationships are so hard to come by in our era.
Into such a situation is where a leader is needed, and into such a situation can only a leader succeed.
People are tired of the new normal, and need someone like you to step into a new role: a servant leader in the family, a servant leader in the community.
Let me know what you have planned for the day ahead.
I would love to hear about it, and, as always will read every email.
Let me know tonight what your day brought.
Simply hit "reply," and start typing out whatever is on your mind.
I pray blessing, discernment, wisdom over your interactions this day. May your family come away from this day renewed in relationship and bondedness. May every family member of yours come away from this day renewed in relationship, and bondedness, even if that isn't apparently clear in every example. May seeds be planted this day in your family that will bring abundant bounty in the months and years ahead.
May today be for you a day of patience, and and a day of planting seeds for a harvest that may take time to reap.
Allan Stevo
What good words.
Our day is done but will continue again tomorrow.
I inadvertently and, I think, without intending to evoke ire, nevertheless evoked it rather abruptly. A family member (fully injected, on meds for blood pressure [pre-injection, unrelated to injection], and a drug rep) was relating a story from long ago about a young radiologist who got cancer due to job exposure and died.
“He apparently had the genes, and the other 50 radiologists didn’t. We just never know what we might be susceptible to.”
Me: we don’t know. But there are things we can do to reduce our susceptibility.
“I think that when God says it’s your time, it’s your time. If he doesn’t, it’s not.” Said with
much emphasis.
Note that moments before we had both agreed that we’ve both heard about the possible risks of brain tumors associated with wireless EarPod use. And she said she just isn’t going to worry about things like this. Which is, frankly, strange to me, given that there are easy ways to mitigate that particular risk.
I asked did she mean by her comment (that it’s just a matter of God’s time or not) that lifestyle doesn’t have any effect?
That was, apparently, precisely the wrong thing to ask.
I assumed that pretty much everyone believes that basic stuff like diet and exercise have a role (regardless of what diet one believes is healthy, most people think that certain foods promote healthy and certain ones oppose health).
She lit up and not in a friendly way and said she didn’t know what I believe and that I am free to believe differently but this is what she believes. “You can be in the hospital, and if God says it’s not your time to go, you are going to be protected.”
I replied that I don’t think it’s an “either/or” situation but she was relentless and it was utterly clear that this was a definite no-go area for her. As a former RN, her reactive response was quite stunning. I mean, it’s not like I have as saying drugs are bad, or The Shot is bad, or doctors are largely ignorant, or ANYTHING. I was merely proposing that perhaps genes are not the be-all, end-all story. That perhaps additional factors can play a role as well.
I said that I really had not intended to argue about it. “I am not going to argue with you,” was her emphatic reply.
Good grief.
Thankfully there were other, positive topics of conversation later in the evening, and we even looked up with her daughter why eggs have different colored shells. And laughed at what we found out. Different colored paint nozzles inside the hen, haha.
Good words, Allan, when so many of us are so tired of the ongoing insanity and just want to knock sense into people, even though that truly is not the best way to get people to be sensible. “It is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance,” but personally I sometimes find it hard to practice that in real life with the people closest to me.
Wish you were my cousin Allan. Love the work you're doing. Marcia