Reflection This Week
WE ARE FAMILY

When I was a youngster, I always dreamed of playing first base for the Pittsburgh Pirates when I grew up. I, of course, never made it. I barely made my Little League baseball team. Hindsight says that the only reason I did was that my Dad was the Assistant Mayor at the time. Even that influence was not enough for the manager to keep me one more year. After all, who wants a chubby kid who can’t run or field and is afraid of the ball?

    Nevertheless, that never deterred me in my love for baseball and my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates even if they were true losers back in the early fifties. When they arose from the dead, so to speak, and won the World Series in 1960, I was in hog heaven. When they won again in 1971 and in 1979, I was even more elated. The years since then for the Pirates have mostly been downhill, bringing back reminiscences of the fifties. Yet, there is always hope. There is always resurrection. I just wish it would come soon.

   My favorite Pirate team was the last one that won the World Series. They were led by Hall-of-Famer Willy Stargell and were held together by the song by Sister Sledge, “We Are Family”. That song held the team together during their infrequent losing streaks. It was also a reminder that those of us who rooted for the Pirates were a family even if we did not know one another. We were bound together.

   Now, for some reason – maybe it’s that my Steelers are not doing all that well – thoughts of baseball, and Spring Training and a new manager and maybe this will be the year reminded me of that glorious year of 1979 and its theme song. It also reminded me at the beginning of this new year as we, as a parish, look at budgets and plans and visions, of the team’s theme song and how true that song is for us as well. We are indeed family, with all that that word entails: joy, love, togetherness as well as disagreements, disappointments and even, sometimes, disasters. Our faith binds us together. It makes us family.

   Yet our family goes beyond our parish. It extends to our Diocese, to the Episcopal Church, to the whole Anglican Communion and beyond. We give almost a quarter of our budget, close to $125,000, to local outreach and our Diocese and beyond. There is always the push, the temptation to cut back, to expend those funds locally, even internally, especially as we try to balance the budget. We could do a whole lot of ministry with that kind of money.

   The truth is we are, but others are doing it, whether in our name or not. It does not matter. Why? Because all those who are beneficiaries of our generosity are part of our family. We support, for instance, and in a small way, the ministry of the people of St. Paul’s in Harlan and All Angels’ in Red Oak and Trinity in Denison. I don’t know any of the people in those congregations and I have no idea where those communities are unless I look at a map. But they are part of our family. So are the people of Swaziland and those who come for food at our Loaves and Fishes Pantry or who stop in for medical care at the Free Health Clinic. We have been blessed and we have been called to share our blessings.

   When I went to Three Rivers Stadium back in 1979 to cheer on the Pirates, the only people I knew in the stands were the guys I went with. But all of us there were in it together, as family, whether the Pirates won or lost. We, in this life, in this world, are in it together. We are God’s family. We need not know one another. We simply need to take care of one another’s needs using the gifts we have been given. That’s what family does.  WJP