A Balance Of Vows

Can one be faithful to justice and to marriage vows? Can one be a parent and still work for peace? Can one live on a limited income and still be open to the world's suffering? Can one change sex roles and still maintain a balance of tasks necessary for running a family? We have been wrestling with these and other questions for the past 19 years of our marriage.

We met doing civil rights work. In addition to the wonder of falling in love, we found that we were attracted to the same goals of peace and justice. On our first real date we helped position police to protect a black family moving into a previously white area where there was concern about a riot. During our honeymoon we had to come back into the city so Dick could make a speech to a Quaker gathering about civil rights.

We did a lot of traveling and marching together--until our first child was born. Then everything changed. Phyllis no longer found herself going out of the home to work for justice. No longer was she able to be caught up in that stirring movement for equality of the '60s.

We developed very rigid sex roles. Phyllis stayed at home caring for Danny and, later, for our adopted daughter, Debby.

Dick continued to work outside the home, and even had the wonderful opportunity to work directly with Martin Luther King, Jr. as a staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Phyllis' concerns hadn't changed, though. Her inability to express them took its toll. She felt a lot of tension and sadness, which of course affected Dick too.

It was only after several years of struggle and the support of caring friends that we began to look at the patterns that had emerged and to see how destructive they were for us as a couple. We realized that both of us had deep concerns about peace and justice and both of us wanted, needed, and deserved opportunities to translate those concerns into specific actions. We painfully began to look at the changes we would have to make in our lives so we could not only be good parents and good spouses, but also good world citizens.

For Dick this meant seeing that he had more responsibility around the house and with the children. For Phyllis this meant recognizing that she wasn't being a bad mother if she spent time away from home and the children while she went back to school to become a nurse and worked on peace and justice concerns. Through all of these changes we both affirmed the importance of children and the privilege of being parents.

We now have three children. Our adopted daughter, 19 years old, is originally from Korea. Our 17-year-old son is homemade, a term we learned to use as a way of gently educating people that both children are ours, even if one is biological and one adopted. The last few days of December saw the addition of a new child to our family. Raquel is from a small village in El Salvador, the village where Dick did his alternative service as a conscientious objector 10 years before she was born.

Raquel is 16 years old and will live with us for the indefinite future as she completes her education. She plans to return to her war-torn country to be with her family and work with orphans. Seeing our family expand as need arises is one way we are both trying to be faithful to God's command to take care of the stranger in our midst.

Our family also includes a political refugee family from Chile. Through our work in human rights, we became aware in the early 1970s that the CIA had helped to engineer the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government in Chile, resulting in widespread human rights abuses and a refugee population of more than one million. When we heard that the U.S. government was going to admit to our country 400 people for whom it would be dangerous to stay in Chile, we decided as a family to become one of the sponsors.

Within three and a half weeks from that decision, our family had grown by four people, a couple and their two little boys. They came from a house in Peru, where 70 people lived in a very cramped living space, to ours in one day. What a transition for them and for us, since we live in a row house with one small bathroom. Using Spanish-English dictionaries and humor, we all grew and survived. The Chilean family now have their own home near us. We continue to be their North American family. We are learning to grow and contract in size while still maintaining our own family integrity.

Decisions about taking in people are family decisions. It has been a joy to watch our children struggle with a bilingual household and grow from the experience; to observe them treat some welfare hotel residents, who come for dinner periodically, with utmost respect as they see past the dirty clothes, smells of poverty, and toothless grins, to the humanity and dignity of these elderly poor who are struggling to survive in a society that wants to pretend they don't exist.

Although we have had to do a lot of growing around sex roles, one area where we have had complete unity is in stewardship of finances. Both of us came from privileged backgrounds, and both of us were uncomfortable with "unearned income." This led us on a journey of divestment in which we sold the real estate, stocks, and bonds our families had passed on to us, usually contributing the proceeds to some peace and justice cause.

We now live only on our salaries. We find that our wages inevitably are low, given our desire to work for peace and human rights and not just for money. We keep a penny-by-penny record of what we spend so we know how much we have to earn to maintain a simple lifestyle.

Having looked at our expenses, we have agreed that each of us is responsible for earning half of that amount. That means that both of us work part time for pay in order to have time to do the other work we feel so called to, and which usually does not pay. Phyllis, for example, has played an important role in Amnesty International both locally and nationally. Both of us have been active with American Christians for the Abolition of Torture and Christians Concerned about El Salvador.

As we grow older and have more medical problems, we are finding some insecurity in having chosen our lifestyle, since it does not include life insurance and we are only beginning to set aside money for retirement. (We hope, though, never to "retire" from the struggle for human rights and peace, even though the time may come when we can no longer find gainful employment.)

Having lived as a nuclear family, an extended family with refugees, and in community where we lived in large communal households, we have witnessed many changes in how couples relate to each other. There were times when many people told us that fidelity and monogamy were obsolete concepts that need to be abandoned as society is rebuilt. So often it seemed that people on the political Left were rejecting monogamy while throwing themselves into the battle for justice, while people on the Right were affirming fidelity and traditional family values, but in a way that subordinated women and ignored a suffering world. Both seemed very inadequate to us.

We listened to what others said, observed their relationships, and ended up believing that God calls us not only to participate actively in the struggle for human dignity and peace, but also to deepen our family relationships and to affirm monogamy and fidelity as crucial for us. In fact, we found that we can much more easily form close, "hugging" friendships with people from the opposite sex because we are so clear about the sanctity of our own relationship.

Fundamental to our family structure, which is built on the commitment to peace and justice commanded by God, is love for each other, our children, and our parents as they experience the losses that come with advancing age. We struggle to be faithful to the words of Micah when he said, "What does the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God," and the gospel words, "When did we see you hungry, Lord...?"

When this article appeared, Phyllis Taylor was a nurse and Dick Taylor was a contributing editor for Sojourners. They lived in Philadelphia.