How To Enjoy Your Family

Contemporary culture would have us judge our families either by a false standard of normality or a depressing one of dysfunction.  But what if learning to work creatively with the limits of our family is actually the way forward?

 

Family life was never meant to be easy.  According to some commentators, it’s the ultimate school for learning to bear with frustration.  But how can we do that?  What practical ways can we find for examining our relationships with family members, refining our emotional understanding, and learning how to host a family peace gathering rather than a continual warzone?

 

Drawing from philosophy, psychology and popular culture, we’ll examine what assumptions each of us hold about family life.  We’ll discuss the multiple roles we play in our families, and what sort of mini-culture our family has created.

 

Above all, we’ll explore key strategies for learning to see our family members in a different light.  And we’ll examine the merits of creating more extended families of friends and relating to the wider human family.  Come prepared to probe your family’s craziness and to acknowledge your own role within it.  This course invites us to become a connoisseur of our family, enjoying it as a drama in which we can re-write that script in fresh and richer ways.

New dates will be announced shortly.