This Is a Job for the Committee

There is a well-loved line our family enjoys from the movie Chariots of Fire. Eric Liddell is being pressured by several British officials to run in a race scheduled for Sunday. Athletics on Sunday is against Eric’s principles. Sunday is a day of rest. A fellow athlete, Lord Andrew Lindsay, offers to give Eric his place in a different race. It would solve the problem, but a grumpy old geezer points out, “That’s a decision for the committee.” A colleague turns to him and corrects him, “We are the committee.” The switch in races is made to the satisfaction of all.

Many times Saturday night rolls around—family night—and we have not made plans in advance for what the family activity for the evening will be. It is at that point that my husband announces with his best grumpy British accent, “That’s a decision for the committee.” Three family members are then selected: a parent, an older child, and a younger child, and they go off into the parents’ bedroom and decide what family time will be while the rest of us get the dishes cleared away and the dishwasher loaded. There are only a few rules for the committee to follow when selecting the activity for the evening. The decision has to be approved by the parent on the committee. All ideas are considered. Older kids don’t have more weight for deciding than younger ones. Once the decision is made, no one off the committee can overrule it.

Some great ideas have emerged from the committee meeting. One of my favorites was the French café night. Everyone is given half an hour to go off and write a poem (more if they are inspired). We then gather around the dining room table. The house is darkened and candles are lit. Everyone makes their favorite hot drink and we go around one at a time and share our poems. Most of them are a hoot. My husband only write in a mocking style. I try to be somewhat serious and am taken that way when I read. Usually son number two will end the evening with a reading, by request, of his epic poem “The Invasion of the Guinea Pigs”. Some family members are more enthusiastic poets than others, but everyone writes something and shares it. Here’s a sample (just verse one out of four):

Birds are chirping as I lay in my bed;

But I pull the covers right over my head.

The sun is now over the horizon line peeping,

But I don’t really care ‘cause I’d rather be sleeping.

How about this one? Anyone can write a poem like this:

Rose are red.

Coffee is black.

But some put in creamer

So I take that back.

Not all families would be comfortable with writing poetry. Sometimes instead of writing, we all select a favorite passage from a book and we each take a turn reading aloud something that is special to us. Of course, we have to set a limit on the reading length, or one person could use up the whole evening. Selections range from A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, to J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis. Even Dave Barry and Patrick McManus have been read. Some of the selections are familiar to all of us since reading books aloud is a time-honored tradition in our family and not limited to Saturday night family time. The idea is to choose something that everyone can enjoy or get a chuckle out of.

Some ideas that have been executed by the committee’s direction have not been all that great. There was the Pudgy Bunny idea—see who can stuff the most large marshmallows into their mouth at one time. Not recommended. Besides the danger of choking, it is really gross. Our family is mostly boys so grossness doesn’t bother them as much. The winner got somewhere around twenty stuffed in before vomiting…

Then there was Stupid Picture night. We got a camera with a full roll of film in it and began doing embarrassing things in front of it! One child made himself look like the pet dog’s head had replaced his own. Someone else did things with shaving cream and hair mousse. We even took a group picture that makes me laugh to this day whenever I see it: crossed eyes, lolling tongues, fingers up noses. I campaigned hard for making it the front of our Christmas card that year, but my beloved thought it was below a minimum requirement of dignity. I still think it was a great opportunity lost…

The committee’s ideas usually aren’t outrageous, and the options most often fall between a board game (parent committee member’s first choice) and a movie (kid committee members’ first choice). It’s a good opportunity to learn how to negotiate a decision. A movie is ruled out if we just did that option the week before. Board games vary from an investment game called Acquire to Encore, Clue, or Trivial Pursuit. Some games are popular for a short time and then pass into obscurity, like Pass the Pig or Hail to the Chief, a game about the Presidents. Cancellation hearts is a good card game choice because it can be played with any number of people.

Our older boys like to order Cheap Ass games off the Internet. They are usually easy to learn, and creative in a weird way. We’ve played some of them like Give Me the Brain, Kill Dr. Lucky, Unexploding Cows, and Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond. Cheap Ass games are just as they describe: cheap. They provide the rules and a few other essentials, like specialized cards or a flimsy gameboard which you should probably laminate if you want the game to last. You provide the dice, poker chips, playing pieces or other standard equipment that can be borrowed from games you already own. Just reading the premise for the game is entertainment. For example, Give Me the Brain is based on the idea that all of you work at a fast food place, but there is only one brain between all of you. It has to be shared. Does this sound familiar?

The committee was a useful tool for a least a decade in our family. Since the members were rotated around, everyone gets a chance to give input on what the family will do together. The younger children like having some clout in decision-making, and the teenagers get a chance to be listened to. On a few occasions the parent just has to break a stalemate or the filibuster for or against an idea will never end. But most of the time the campaign for an idea is short and the activity for the evening is chosen without an uproar. So what are we doing this Saturday? I don’t know. That a decision for the committee.

Every Day Is Thanksgiving Day

Gathering around one table to share food and conversation can bind people together. Whether it is a family, a potluck group, or a business luncheon, for at least a brief period of time, the people around the table share a common obligation to be gracious, display appropriate manners and consideration, and even display at least a superficial interest in one another. Depending on the circumstances, a mealtime can be a time of great intimacy, or merely polite indifference. Sadly it can also be a time of tension and division if the conversation gets hotter than the food.

With a unitive purpose in mind, sharing a meal becomes the heart of family life. Everywhere you turn someone is extolling the value of families eating dinner together. We do it as much as we possibly can, and will bend schedules and timing rather than forfeit this significant sharing time. When we gather for a meal, we do more than eat and talk together. We also give thanks.

There are lots of standard prayers families can learn to recite for dinnertime grace. In some families the father or mother always speaks for everyone in blessing the food. Singing a blessing is also a good way to give thanks. Another option is taking turns giving thanks for the meal. We have done all of these things at one time or another, but for more than a decade we have settled into a specific tradition. My husband begins with leading everyone in the Sign of the Cross. Then he chooses one individual to start the round of thanksgivings. As we go around the table taking turns, everyone is required to come up with at least one thing that they are thankful for, whether it is for that day or just a general thanks. Once everyone has voiced an acceptable thanks, we wrap up our blessing of the meal with the standard prayer, “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from your bounty, through Christ Our Lord, Amen,” and close with the Sign of the Cross.

Giving thanks for something every mealtime didn’t start out perfectly. When our daughter was a preschooler she would often thank the Lord for her nice, pink day. We didn’t usually press her any further on that, since her expression of thanks was sincere and cheerful. However, sometimes a child would get lazy and thoughtlessly give thanks for “a good day” several days in a row. When it seemed to be becoming habitual, Dad usually piped up and asked for something more specific. “I can’t think of anything,” was never accepted as an excuse. If he was met with a less than cooperative attitude, he would make some suggestions. “Can you breathe? Can you see? Are you in good health?”

With practice and thoughtfulness, everyone got better at coming up with something that they clearly recognized as a blessing they enjoyed that day or over a period of time. Some typical thanksgivings that pop up over and over again are for good health, peace in our country, being able to shop at a grocery store that is stocked well with what we need. We thank the Lord for the gifts of each other, whether we are a brother thankful for other brothers, or a wife thankful for a faithful husband. We express our gratitude for the wonderful job my husband has that provides for us so well. The countless things that we could so easily take for granted often come to mind as we go around taking turns.

In the beginning everyone was glad to be off the hook with one thing they could offer their gratitude for. As our children got older, and miracle of miracles, even appreciative of things they had taken for granted earlier, their thanksgivings got more numerous. It is not unusual for our adult children to now list briefly two, three, maybe even four things that they recognized as blessings for them that day: a friend’s phone call, a good grade on a test, protection from an accident, the gift of faith.

Developing an attitude of gratitude can do so much to focus our priorities in times of uncertainty. Once, quite unexpectedly, my husband gave thanks for the new job he knew was out there waiting for him to find. It was the first anyone of us knew that he had lost his current employment that day. Startling as the announcement was, given in the form of a thanksgiving helped us all to be reassured that our provider was ready to sniff out that gem of a job until it was discovered. It helped me to immediately take up that air of confidence he had, so that our children were not burdened with witnessing their parents’ anxiety. I knew we would be discussing the implications of this development in private later.

When the custom of giving thanks first began, it was clear that some individuals were just picking the first thing that came to mind and throwing that out. Thanking the Lord for some trial that we had to endure during the day has its merits, but only if the trial was endured with patience and fortitude. Someone who thanks the Lord for something they grumped about all day, and are continuing to grump about, making everyone around them miserable, is not sincerely thankful, but using the moment to vent their continuing lack of graciousness. We learned to spot these phony thanksgivings and disqualify them at once. Sometimes dinner was delayed for a minute while we all waited for the disgruntled family member to choke out some legitimate, usually enormously obvious, thing worthy of their acknowledged thanks. No one was ever in a bad enough mood to be excused from this obligation, even if all they could manage was “I’m glad I can see.”

Life has so many bumps, bruises, disappointments, and seemingly wrong turns that throw us for a loop. Remembering to give thanks is like the long pole the tightrope walker uses to cross the high wire. It balances us when things are tricky. It puts the hardships in perspective and reduces their importance in the face of salvation, loving relationships, and the steady provision of life’s necessities. When our health is gone, we can be thankful that we had good health enough of our life to know what it is. When our relationships sour, we can be thankful that God does not ever desert us or give up on us. When even our basic necessities are in peril, we can thank God that his salvation is our refuge in times of trouble. A steady diet of giving thanks will keep our attitudes healthy when the challenges seem unbearable. Thank God for that, and when you’re done saying grace, please pass the gratitude.