Lesson 2-7, "Living in Love and Harmony"

Aside from the kind of vague hippy-commune title, the main point of this lesson is to encourage girls to look for ways to promote, demonstrate, and experience greater love and harmony at home. It's part of the ongoing Homefront/Family Life unit. It's straightforward, addressing concrete things that girls can do to help everything at home move along more smoothly.

It's an important lesson, because teens (well, all of us, really) are exceptionally skilled--often completely unconciously--at how to foster domestic disharmony. They/we know how to push family members' buttons. They know what kinds of behaviors will annoy siblings, what will drive parents crazy, and what to procrastinate on for maximum panic and chaos at the last minute. So it's useful to remind young women that there's a certain amount that's under their own control, especially when it comes to their own responses, and to nudge them to be more aware of how their own actions, instinctive responses, or knee-jerk behaviors might be contributing to the family atmosphere.

I personally won't use the "what if this was the last week with your family" suggestion at the end of the lesson. That seems unnecessarily morbid to me. I also don't know how useful the T-chart would be, separating out what you learn at home and what you learn outside the home - that might just feed into the relentless uncritical drumbeating against "the world" that is the sad default in so many Mormon lessons. But it did make me ponder a bit this week about what I myself learned at home.

I did learn cooking and sewing, skills mentioned in the lesson (although I also benefited from 7th grade "home ec" - I'm sure that's no longer taught in my junior high these days) - both from my mom and from my dad. My mom did the everyday cooking like weeknight dinners and the majority of the baking; my dad had some specialties like spicy Kung Pao chicken, Texas chili on New Years, pie crust, and steak au poivre which he taught us all to make, and he always did the Saturday pancakes. Both my parents sewed (which I would guess is a little unusual) - my mom's a fiber artist with quilts and toys and my dad was a whiz with ripstop nylon, leather and cordura, stitching us down vests from kits, duffel bags, ponchos, and wallets. I did learn how to set the table and all the dining graces, how to conduct myself in social situations with confidence. I learned how to put stuff together and use power tools. I learned the values and behaviors of deep emotional connection. I also learned some things specifically from my parents and my immediate family that were unique to my family's culture, and which I treasure. So thanks, Mom & Dad, for helping me learn:

• an appreciation for the joys of a long cross-country road trip
• how important it is to have outlets for my creativity
• critical thinking, especially having a fine-tuned ear for faulty logic at school, in church lessons & talks, and in the mass media
• the importance of intellectual curiosity
• how to look stuff up
• how to write clearly
• the pleasures of reading, and the finer points of film criticism
• that there's a place for smart girls in this world
  
• that I'm a wonderful, capable person who can dream big
  

And now, just a gentle caution.

Try not to teach the lesson so that girls come away feeling that either 1) it's all up to them, or 2) it's all their fault. Home lives are complicated. It's not as simple as happy/unhappy, good/bad, functional/dysfunctional. I think no one can sing the sappy "roses bloom beneath our feet/ all the earth's a garden sweet/ making life a bliss complete" and not think, who the HECK are they talking about? Yes, girls have some stake in, and responsibility for, what goes on at home. But there are some things that can't be fixed with just a cheerier attitude or a thoughtful note on the pillow. And it's okay to acknowledge that. It's also not a girl's job to just suck up and smooth over hostility, anger, or abuse from family members. It sometimes promotes love and harmony to have an honest (painful) conversation about something profoundly wrong in a family - to have the courage to name the problem and to say, hey this is NOT okay, I am NOT okay with this. "Harmony" doesn't mean "sweep problems under the rug" or "avoid conflict at all costs." Those are really damaging family dynamics. A failed home isn't one which experiences conflict and brokenness, it's one that experiences those but pretends that everything is fine, both to the outside world and within its own walls.