Seventh-day Adventist Kinship, International, Inc.

Mankind enjoys connecting with each other. How many of you look forward to seeing and connecting with your own families for celebrations, special gatherings, or just relaxing and having fun together?? How do you feel when a scheduled gathering is canceled or you can’t attend?

Recently many of us have experienced those feelings with our COVID-19 challenges of “stay at home” or “follow the social distancing” recommendations. Yes, the virus has caused immediate and very close difficulties for many of us. We can’t visit dear family members suddenly isolated in a hospital room for non-virus health issues. Or maybe you’ve lost a family member to a non-virus disease or other health issues, and you can’t even be with them or support your family members.

Being “disconnected” can be painful and emotionally impactive. Our feelings can run deep through separation and rejection. Many of us are feeling the results of separation and loss which we have no control over.

Today’s emotional challenges may be a real glimpse into the same emotional feelings and challenges LGBT+ families encounter often. As mentioned above, we human beings enjoy connecting with each other. We naturally experience many energizing responses inside ourselves—in our thoughts, emotions, and responses. We can feel happy and excited to be connected.

But if we are confused about a relationship—if we don’t fully understand a family member’s desires, beliefs, and behaviors—our connections can become bruised and even broken. Those uplifting feelings, those happy warm emotions turn cool—even cold. We can feel lost, and the misunderstood family member can feel rejected and helpless!

Both sides may wonder what to do, how to safely connect and grow rather than sever a desired family relationship and lose potential healing connections. Although each family is made up of individuals with unique genes and learnings, if we desire to learn and understand how each of us does feel and think, we can connect with other people and other families and be open to their experiences, growth, and acceptance.

Today Kinship LGBT+ members have created strong bridges of communication with each other around the world. And our Kinship Family & Friends members need to see the value in connecting with each other and helping ourselves understand many complicated and, possibly different, ideas and thoughts that can and will benefit ourselves and our families.

The positive art of connecting is flexible and variable; but together moms and dads, brothers and sisters, grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins can connect, share, and learn from each other. Working together, we can recover our intimate family connections and see our families bloom into healthy families.

Our Family & Friends ZOOM call on Sunday, June 14 is our start to meet new family members, our start to learn how to communicate and share safely, our start to help ourselves and our families grow into supportive, accepting, and loving people.

We look forward to CONNECTING on SUNDAY, JUNE 14. Save the date on your calendars! More details will follow for your safe connection and beneficial participation.

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Kinship Family & Friends wants to become experts and promoters of those three actions. Carolyn and John strongly believe that by CONNECTING all interested Family & Friends members we can enrich and enlarge our support and participation in Kinship's goals to make life better for all of its members and their willing family members. Imagine doubling or tripling active involvement of LGBTQ+ family members within their own families, with other families, and with other Kinship members. 

Once we are connected and know each other better, we can establish different lines of communication so we can SHARE family life situations and solutions with each other. Carolyn and John have over 25 years of experience and involvement with their gay son and his life. In addition, they have also connected and become friends and supporters of more gay and lesbian friends, transgender friends, and a few other LGBTQ+ folks. Imagine the personal knowledge and support we have collectively between all Kinship Family & Friends members! 

As we become familiar and comfortable sharing personal experiences, excellent articles and studies, valuable books, TV programs, and movies, we can help other families. We know a couple of pastors that have quietly asked their congregations, "How many of you have an LGBTQ+ family member, maybe not a son or daughter, but a niece or nephew, grandchild, cousin, brother, or sister?" Answers range between 40-45%, and that's just folks who know. How many silent families also exist in our congregations? Carolyn and John are comfortable that at least 50% of our congregation and faith friends probably have one or more LGBTQ+ family members; and we all know the stresses, confusions, emotions, and loneliness that can occur. 

This leads us to the third action to SUPPORT those families as we all walk along through our own family journey. None of us are experts with all the correct medical, psychological, or theological professional answers—if they even exist—but we all are parents, aunts and uncles, siblings, and grandparents. We do have real-life experiences with successes and mistakes.

So by connecting, sharing, and supporting, we can develop useful bridges of communication and understandings. Together we can make new friends, learn new ideas and information, and help more families grow loving, understanding, and accepting. 

Please feel free to comment and add to this concept. How would you like to connect? What useful ideas and suggestions popped into your mind as you read this? 

LET'S START CONNECTING!

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Today's world is a bit chaotic! A few weeks ago our political world was filled with various discussions, opinions, needs, and desires and gatherings. Our physical world was moving out of wintertime and looking forward to springtime with less snow, tornadoes, and rain, and more wildflowers and wonderful sunsets. Suitcases and hiking backpacks were coming out of their closets getting ready for fun trips, looking forward to cruises, vacations, school proms and graduations, and spring break. Then suddenly our world changed!

Our plans were dampened and some were washed away. The virus arrived and, with it, major changes to our plans, our lives, and our immediate futures.

So what? We can overcome it! God has given each of us the ability to be tenacious, to be strong and accepting of our temporary "new" world.

One day our gay son Aric discovered a tree near our lakeside cabin in the California High Sierras. This 80-feet tall pine tree stood boldly upright on a 20-foot tall granite ledge. It only had two roots to feed it and hold it upright. One root grew toward the mountain into rich soil and rocks. The second root snaked its way back and forth, over and down the face of the ledge. It was over 30 feet long, almost 2 feet in diameter, and at its far end it dropped straight down about 5 feet into its rich soil.

Aric came back to the cabin and said, "Mom and Dad, I've got something neat to show you." And he drove us back over to "the tree." We walked up and studied "the tree." He and I climbed up the ledge and found the back good root, then we came back to the front and examined the bold exploring root. Wow, it had worked hard to find food for its tree!

Aric said, "Mom and Dad, this is my tenacious tree. It reflects my life and our family life!"

He was correct. As I've studied the word tenacious, I found that it fit our family's needs. And today it also fits our Kinship Family & Friends' needs.

Tenacious can mean "holding firmly" like that root held its tree firmly to the ground and granite ledge. As Kinship members and family and friends members, we can also purposely hold firmly to each other, to support each other, to even be roots of emotional and loving support to each other and keep ourselves and our families upright and firm.

Tenacious can also mean being stubborn and persistent. Again, I'm sure that tenacious root was stubborn and persistent when the strong winds tried to blow it's tree over, tried to end it's life; but the root wouldn't let go—it hung on! Sometimes when the winds of hate and misunderstanding try and blow us over, insult our members and bruise our families, we can also support each other and not let go either.

Another tenacious definition reflects on being strongly cohesive or adhesive. Through tenacity, we can stick together and support each other. Don't give up and let anyone or anything pry you away from your family and friends. Sadly, we still have many folks that honestly don't understand. They still believe what they've been incorrectly taught, and only our loving tenacity can start to change their feelings and beliefs.

Finally, tenacity is also being retentive: the ability to retain or remember. So as you think about your own lives, your own families, your own life experiences, search out the positive and fun memories, recall and share those tenacious memories. They are great tools and emotional triggers to make a moment or maybe a day brighter and survivable.

Thanks, Aric, for finding your tenacious tree. Your thoughts and feelings about it were right on. Today our family memorial plaque for Aric still sits below that tenacious root. If you ever visit the June Lake Loop, off of highway 395 in Mono County, let us know and we'll tell you how to find the tenacious tree.

Blessings to all, and happy tenacity!

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Feelings are the world’s universal language. Do you have feelings? Do you know where they come from? Or what caused them? Do they impact your life? Are they important to you and your life? YES should have been your answer for every question. Our feelings are us. They reflect where we are emotionally at the time we felt them.

And if you think a moment about feelings, have you noticed that everyone has them no matter who they are or where they are? People around the world laugh in the same way. They giggle or explode with laughter when something funny occurs in their sight or mind or hearing. We also cry and feel bad when something sad happens in our lives.

Each of us, as a person, is impacted daily by our feelings. Our feelings are also alive and well in our relationships with others and their relationship with us. Our partners, our families, our friends, and our enemies all generate feelings when we interact, some great, some just good, some sad, and some really create anger and hate. That’s us. That’s our feelings. And to live better lives, have better relationships and better family communication, we need to understand where feelings come from. We need to understand what they mean to each of us.  

Our feelings are us. Just like my brain is me. I am my brain. My feelings are me. I am my feelings. Some folks don’t agree when we share those statements on a marriage encounter weekend. But over 40 years and several hundred weekends we have personally watched thousands of husbands and wives discover their feelings, learn to share and accept each other’s feelings, and often see their acceptances of each other. Their understandings of each other become acceptable and even desired as they personally learned how to find feelings, share feelings safely, build safe communication bridges between each other, and bond together in loving support. 

Marriage encounter basically focuses on husbands and wives, but we urge them to share their new communication tools with their children, and we’ve had many share how successful their family communications became. Carolyn and I believe very strongly and emotionally that these tools will be very useful for our Kinship members and their families.   We want to teach and share about feelings, emotions, and personalities, creating safe bridges of communication within a family, with the goal of helping all family members understand and connect with all their willing family members. Our family communication workshop is almost ready for use.

Let’s stop a few minutes and chat about feelings. What are feelings? Our Adventist theologist taught they were right and wrong, correctable good ones and devil-imposed bad ones. Our pastors had a difficult time accepting the real fact that “feelings are an instantaneous reaction to a person, place, or situation.” They are not right or wrong! They are how our brains react to various stimulus. 

Feelings and their companion emotions are a new, vibrant topic being discovered in all relationships. Imagine a world without feelings! There would be no glue to bind humans together; life would be colorless and isolated. It was an honor to spend time with our Kenya Kinship members at Kampmeeting last summer. We laughed and cried over the same topics, over the same successes and challenges. Sharing feelings was a common communication tool that worked smoothly and successfully. We laughed and hugged throughout the Kampmeeting as they shared their journeys. Feelings are the same worldwide; languages are not. 

Let’s learn about our feelings. Some of us must search for them. Others have them handy and visible. Let’s become comfortable finding them and sharing them. We can all grow stronger, visible, and successful in our desire and goal to enrich families, especially new families, as they find our Kinship path and join our journey.

Look forward to hearing from anyone with their feelings, thoughts, suggestions, and comments.        

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Carolyn and I felt honored and humbled when we were invited to become coordinators of the Kinship Family & Friends activities. We have been loving and supporting members along with our gay son Aric for many years. Unfortunately, he lived in New York City so we didn’t physically attend together.

Over the years of enjoyable participation, we have always felt warmly welcomed but often, after attending a Kampmeeting, we drove away wondering if we had helped the members in any way ... oh we shared great stories ... we laughed and cried over challenging moments ... we all had fun BUT...

.... what about the families that weren’t there ... what about the friends who weren’t sure they should attend too ... what about the moms and dads ... brothers and sisters ... aunts and uncles ... grandparents ... how do we reach out to them and help them want to accept ... attend ... and embrace the Kinship journey and their family members?

The Board asked us to create “our” program for Board review and acceptance. We did and they accepted. Let us briefly share our desires which will turn into goals as we formalize each area. Carolyn and I feel strongly about helping “ families” gain knowledge and understanding of the “LGBTIQ universe” ... (that’s John’s term) ... but he sees our human world as a large, complex, dynamic universe .... with many different swirling bodies made up of different ingredients .. beliefs ... opinions ... and feelings ... and focusing on the need to create and activate understanding and acceptance of our Kinship universe.

Also, we believe strongly about helping families build and maintain healthy family relationships. As we help family members understand and accept ... hopefully, we can help all members accept and absorb all feelings of life and love from all family members. We understand the challenges that can occur ... but we also have some excellent tools for finding and sharing feelings that can yield wonderful results. Feelings are the strongest internal ingredient each one of us has ... but finding them ... learning to share them effectively ... and accepting them is a gift that each one of us can do if we want to. Another goal is to help Kinship members and supporters learn those tools.

John, the scientist, also believes we need to create, assemble, and provide an accurate, trustable resource library of information ... programs ... interviews ... and other communications that all members can access for their specific needs. This “library” will also be available to any person or family reaching into Kinship for understanding and support. We feel strongly that concerned, confused, and even scared and depressed family members need a comfortable, safe, understanding, and available place to enter and explore. We have visited our present collection of information but, personally, believe it could become more interactive ... more personable for our own SDA universe ... even more, effective to every visitor.

As this activity matures and grows ... we dream of 1,000s of safe family rooms across the country where “new” families can come ... relax ... ask questions ... gain knowledge and support ... and hopefully, create strong bonds of understanding and love with their family member ... Of course, we also want to reach out and reconnect with Kinship families already knowledgeable and supporting ... because their family rooms may start to bring this dream true. 

Also please feel comfortable and free to offer new dreams ... ideas ... comments ... suggestions ... Carolyn and I are only the coordinators of this part of Kinship ... we do need your support too. Thanks for letting us be part of your Kinship movement ... Kinship is important ... sacred ... meaningful ... and appropriate.

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