Family Matters

Bishop Vashti McKenzie

Light, color, sound, images, music and movement came together in a creative documentary motion picture entitled The March of the Penguins. It was a surprise box office success a few years ago.

What seemed just like a Discovery Channel or National Geographic type of presentation turned out to be very instructive in many ways. It showed the importance of family. It showed that family matters.

The March of the Penguins shows the journey of the Emperor penguins marching single file across the frozen wilderness from the seas to their mating area 70 miles away. The emperors persistently waddle through the blowing snow. They go through an elaborate courtship of dances and songs. The couples unite and the female lays one egg.

The female returns to the sea for fish to eat, while the male sits on the egg for 120 days. The male penguin does this without food. Upon the return of the female emperor, the male takes his turn to journey to the sea for food. Finally, both parents leave the chick. They will not return until the ice melts as summer approaches. The sea is now close enough for the baby chick to make the journey and begin a life in the sea for the next four years. Then the journey begins all over again. The mature penguin returns to march to the mating grounds and procreate.

Lesson #1: If God can take care of these birds, then God can also take care of us. If God counts the hairs on our head, knows when a sparrow falls, and designs perfectly individual fingerprints, then God surely is able.

Any number of natural hazards could prematurely end the journey. The family could fall prey to hungry predators. This is true for the human family, as well as the emperor penguin. Natural disasters, physical and spiritual enemies, as well as the sheer magnitude of bringing children into the world and seeing them to maturity, could cut the journey short.

Lesson #2: It takes everyone, both male and female to make survival work. There is and interrelatedness and interdependent relationship to this survival. We tend to refer to this lesson as it takes a whole village to raise a child. In our cultural context, both parents may not be present to participate, that's when the church, community and friend network pitch in to help our young chicks make maturity.

Lesson #3: Our creator is an excellent choreographer. "For to everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; God has put a sense of past and future (eternity) into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know there is nothing better for them to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat drink and take pleasure in all their toil." (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-2; 11b-13.)

There was a season for everything. A season to march, dance and sing. A season where all you can do is to sit and wait. There is a season for each penguin to become the sole breadwinner or fish retriever. There is the season to trust God to look after the chick the same way we trust God when we send our children to school or to the store, or when they take the family car alone for the first time. There is a season to take the chicks to the sea to teach them to fish for themselves, until it is time for them to return to the mating grounds.

In a bleak harsh environment, the emperor penguins manage to make family. In the harsh uncertain environment of the 21st century, we must make family, the Lord being our helper!