Six families where God is love

Six families where God is love
Fecha de publicación: 
18 March 2022
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We met them thanks to the “Hasta que el amor sea Ley” campaign, which is being promoted by the collaborative platform Voces Ecuménicas Cubanas for nearly a year and now, amid popular debates on the Family Code Project, fits like a glove.

The goal has been to "always make visible the diversity of families in Cuban ecumenical life and the dignity of everything created in that great "tree of life" that we identify as our commitment to plurality," as stated on its Facebook profile.

Everyone in these audiovisual capsules is a believer, but they do not necessarily share the same religious creed. There are single-parent, homoaffective, reassembled families... there are families of all colors, because "as long as there is a thread of love, there is a family," as psychologist Patricia Ares pointed out in one of the videos.

«... the essence of family is the love relationship»

We know Dr. Patricia from different spaces and media. She and her husband introduced themselves as a reassembled family, each arriving with two children from previous marriages.

“The important thing in a family is its relationships, its ties; and how they are able to express solidarity, reciprocity, containment, protection. That is the true family and that is the one we are defending," Patricia explained.

Reinerio Arce pointed out that "there is a great diversity in the Bible of different families, there is no single family model for me, the essence of the family is the relationship of love."

"We are a pack; no one can be left alone"

Maylé Vázquez Ávila belongs to the Quaker Friends Church. She confessed that from a very young age she prepared herself for the family she wanted to create and, although she has sometimes felt labeled for being divorced, she understood that her family project was not lost at all.

“One day I said to myself: well, the train moves on. Someone just got off the train car, but we move on...”, says Maylé. That “we” involves her two children, a boy and a girl, and herself. Her children gave her a huge lesson about family: “We are a pack. No one can be left alone.”

Maylé wants a family that shows love, dialogues... Her motherhood has led her to a certainty: God has to be a mother.

"... many waters will not quench love"

And that of Adiel and Lázaro has had to swim against the tide. But they remain together, celebrating the happiness of living together. Adiel is a Baptist and Lachy an Episcopalian. They go to different churches, but they take care of their two cats together (the other members of the family they have formed).

The biblical text that we believe in is very useful for our lives and is Song 8:7 when it says that many waters will not quench love. Whether they are the waters of misunderstandings and prejudices, many times these waters try to extinguish love. It has happened in our history of life, those many waters have not been able to quench our that love,” they state.

Family and solidarity

Joel Suárez is the son of Reverend Raúl Suárez, a Baptist pastor and founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center. Together with his father, he tells us:

«We are a family that, due to our family biography, try to embody in our daily life actions, in the family environment, what we want and preach for the world. All this becomes a singular challenge given that there are no traditionally assigned roles in the family, and so we all have to face, boys and girls included, these tasks that combine the reproduction of the family daily life with solidarity abroad. »

«The world we live in is diverse, let’s build it together»

Jorge is Muslim. He believes in Allah, the God of the Koran. Mayla is a Protestant Christian, her faith is in the God of the Bible. However, there is a belief in which they do agree: «The world we live in is diverse, Let’s build it together».

This is how Jorge expresses it, and adds: “When we look at nature, flowers are infinite, so how is it possible that if God's creation proposes so many different and diverse flowers, sometimes we pretend that we, as human beings, have to be encapsulated in a single vision? It doesn't make sense."

Mayla confirms it from her own family experience: “We are so different... we have our own ways —not only our character— of thinking, of believing, totally different, and what that is precisely what unites us: it is how my son looks at his sister and it seems that the world fades away in that look; how my husband looks at me... and that is love.”

Family is comfort

Idael Montero Pacheco left his entire blood family in Bayamo, Granma. He is now the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Marianao, and has built a family here based on relationships of hospitality and solidarity:

“I think that the fundamental question is there, in discovering that you have a support group, that you are not alone. Family is a shelter. Family is also solidarity, and when you feel that those needs are satisfied, well, you say, gosh, this is also my family.

“A family is a space for socialization. It is a space for love, and if those values work or are made visible, then family is present.”

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff

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