In case it seems like my ADD has gotten me off track, I just want to – Oh, man look at that butterfly!  Just kidding.  I want to clarify that I am using this summer to raise the questions I hope to find some answers to over the next year of travel.  It will not always seem to relate directly to the “year of exploration,” but I hope to tie it all back in over the next 12 months.

Today’s question:  What does it take to be a family?  It’s a valid question, and one that becomes harder to answer the more you think about it.  It can be personal; it can be political; it can be spiritual.  No matter how you think about it, family is a complex thing to tackle.

Until recently, I have always thought about it on a personal level.  Family must mean those people that you grow up with who are related to you by blood or marriage.  You get new members as babies are born and spouses are found, and you lose some as they grow old and pass on.  By and large, though, the blood-family stays pretty constant throughout your life.

If I have learned anything through watching old episodes of the primetime hit Brothers & Sisters, however, family is sometimes harder to identify.  Yes, I have fallen for the endearingly dysfunctional Walker family (I love you, Sally Field), and through this experience have seen family redefined.

The characters in the show are not family just because they share DNA (the soap opera-esque plot assures that illegitimate children and adopted strangers factor in, too).  Rather, they are family because they trust each other to always be there when called upon.  They find their place in the clan only after proving trustworthy through a relationship of mutual dependence with another family member.  They earn trust and they learn to trust.  And the thing about the Walker family is: once you’re in, you’re in.  For better or worse, this is a family defined by never-ceasing bonds.

The thing that gets me about the Brothers & Sisters family is simply that many blood-families do not look like this.  Brothers betray brothers and don’t make amends; fathers leave for good; sons and daughters turn their backs on the family.  Blood is supposed to be thicker than water, but the harsh truth is that sometimes…it isn’t.  For me personally, I am just now trying to learn what it means to maintain that kind of trust with my own family while off at college and moving around all the time.

For those not blessed with TV Show families, then, what is the answer?  Well, the recipe seems pretty clear:  If the primary ingredient to family is trust (not blood), then it seems clear that a family can emerge from something besides blood.  No matter how disillusioned or jaded you are with your own family, you can still create surrogate families from, well, “water.”

Churches, of course, interest me the most right now.  Should “church” be one of those surrogate families?  Should it be the most important family?  I’m not talking about church buildings or congregations or even denominations.  I just mean whatever group you choose to walk with as you seek out more about your own faith; the group of people who you depend on to talk with about your doubts, to encourage each other, and to always be there when called upon.  For the TV-families and the regular old Joe the Plumber (Palin didn’t copyright it, don’t worry), it seems like the church should act as an incomparably unique type of family.

I don’t know that this is true right now.  Lots of churches are just places to meet up once a week to make sure you look as devout as that neighbor with the better lawn.  That’s an exaggeration, but I still think few of us put as much stock in the bonds we have with church members as we do our own blood-families.

Which is weird, coming from people who follow a guy that said brother and sister and mother are “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven.”  I’m not saying we are supposed to deny our blood-families, but maybe we can expand our definition a little.  

A young evangelical hippie with dreadlocks named Shane Claiborne started a thing called “The Simple Way” in the heart of Philadelphia about 10 years ago.  It is a place where people can come and live together in mutual dependence, unified by certain commitments to justice, service, worship and love.  He came and spoke at my (and his) high school one time, and it immediately became clear that The Simply Way is not a “church” in the way we usually think about it.  The group is unified by their shared beliefs, of course, but there is a bond of trust and dependency among this group of people that is wholly absent from most mainstream churches.

I don’t know if Shane Claiborne has it right, or if churches can foster this sort of bond through less-radical means.  I plan to ask the different churches how they think of themselves as “families” over the next year.  For now, I’ll leave you with this:  It may turn out that the cliche is right, and blood is actually thicker than water.  Even so, they say Jesus turned water into wine.  Blood can’t be that hard.