MARFAM is entering its 15th year; it has been promoting the cause of family life since 1994.  Your financial support helps us to operate, produce the publications, including this monthly enewsletter and maintain our website. Advertise your company or project on the website, enewsletter or various publications or send a donation to P.O. Box 2881, Randburg 2125. South Africa.  Every Rand, Dollar or Euro helps to strengthen families somewhere, somehow. THIS CHRISTMAS why not consider sending us a cheque or begin to make a small monthly donation into our bank account. Contact us for details.

Life is full of stimuli and at this time of the year there seem to be twice as many, so much so that we suffer from mental overloads and need reminders on our cellphones, alarms, Skype or some other form of wake-up call. I am as scatty as the next person but two quite small stimuli during the last few days somehow made an impression on me.
Searching for appropriate music for my Family Matters Radio Veritas show I found a song called, “I’ll be home for Christmas.”  It’s not a new song but had been reworked for a situation very current for some families in the US and also in many other parts of the world. A sweet childish voice is calling her daddy. “Will you be home for Christmas?” she asks. Her daddy was in Iraq; it could just as well be fin the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan or other places in the Middle East where soldiers, both men and women form part of peace-keeping or combat forces.  Many thousands of soldiers are deployed away from home wishing they could send this message to their loved ones, “Don’t worry, I’ll be home for Christmas.” Other men and women and children too, refugees, millions from Zimbabwe living in South Africa at the moment are wishing and hoping that conditions there would make it possible to go home, no doubt this year still laden with groceries and the bare essentials of life that are not available there. We’ve also been reminded through a Pastoral letter from our bishops that trafficking in persons, as a modern form of slavery, is as big a problem as the slave trade ever was.  They too, mostly women and children, would dearly want to be home for Christmas.  
That question, “Will you be home for Christmas?” means different things to different people. Some are dying to be home, figuratively and others literally. Some are fortunate and are choosing not to be home but to get away on holiday, others fortunate to be able to stay at home. Still others are fortunate to have a home that is more than a shack or that has not been damaged in some of the natural disasters that have affected many people across the world while many are sad to be home alone.
It is just as well that the message of Christmas, of God’s love made present among us and come to make a home with us in the form of a tiny baby is for all people.  This baby and his family were homeless at the time of his birth, found shelter amongst the animals, as there was no room in the inn. They were sought out, yes, by shepherds and strangers but had to flee into exile from their ruler.  How deeply sad that history still repeats itself within our human family.
The other stimulus that touched me was the host of little white butterflies on their annual migration that fluttered across my path as I drove the 400 kilometres from Botswana back to South Africa after a presentation there. Hence my New Year’s question addressed to God through the medium of a butterfly:  

“Little white butterfly
where do you flutter to with such determined haste?
You, just one of millions,
yet single-mindedly each pursuing your common goal?   
Eastwards you wing your way to where your fate is sealed
while life begins anew.   
You cross my path as I speed by
and thousands cross before the speeding cars
with many crushed, impaled,
a speck of dirt before our eyes. 
Birds swarm and dive, gorging on this once-yearly feast,
but your drive to live and be transformed
is not to be denied. 
Little white butterfly
do you understand Creator’s plan
any more than maybe I?

May 2009 be a journey of faith, growth, fulfillment and joy.
Toni Rowland

The 1st 2009 issue of MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIVING is now available and orders will be dispatched before the new year.  The themes for 2009 i.e MARRIAGE AND FAMILY GROWING TOGETHER and for the 1st three months are developed for enrichment and information on family matters.  A topical article for January “Growing roots, adopting values” is published on the website www.marfam.org.za. See also the website for a list of MARFAM publications.
Theft of cheques in the postal system has been a worry this year as we are not sure which of our publications subscribers have renewed for 2009.  Electronic payments are more secure and are encouraged.  Banking details available on request. 

It continues to be a hectic time, distributing 2009 Family calendars and the faithsharing booklet “The Healing Power of Love” over the last months and we continue to fill orders for these. Now we are almost ready for the No 1 issue of 2009 of the quarterly magazine MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIVING around the theme MARRIAGE AND FAMILY GROWING TOGETHER. For all MARFAM publications see the publications list on the website www.marfam.org.za.
The monthly article on the website concerns the issue of HIV/AIDS and family life. 

2009 THEME “MARRIAGE AND FAMILY GROWING TOGETHER.” 
An overview of the theme for the year, monthly overviews and weekly reflections are published on the website www.marfam.org.za. In addition the introductory reflection on the January theme “Growing Roots” appears below.  Reflections in various vernacular languages are also available by email on request.  

It is hoped that the PFM Manual will be completed and published shortly with quite an extensive collection of resource sheets. The manual has been used in a number of workshops and follow-up days around the country.  The concept of CHURCH AS THE FAMILY OF GOD, the family as the domestic church and the parish as a community of families of all kinds is the foundation of the programme and is beginning to be known and understood. The various family life movements that are active in South Africa do not have the resources to run their programmes in all the local dioceses, some of which are very spread out and have but few Catholics, so it is my hope that through the raising of awareness about family life, about the Church and the available resources the family apostolate will expand.  
The Family Life Desk also works in close collaboration with the Department for Evangelisation and I will be taking part in workshops around the country over the next few months but whenever possible too I visit parishes on request to promote the vision of a family-friendly church. 

The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference has issued a very hard-hitting statement condemning the injustice surrounding the ongoing political wrangling in our next-door neighbour  Zimbabwe. Conditions continue to deteriorate for very many of the population in particular through the cholera epidemic and food shortages. And yet the first – and very successful - Retrouvaille weekend for hurting marriages was held in the capital Harare at the end of November. Prayer, moral support and action too are required to sustain and help rebuild the country. 
An innovative response too is the call from local Justice and Peace departments to support the campaign from the Catholic Welfare and Development office in Cape Town for donations towards the purchase of JIK bleach to help purify and decontaminate water. The Welfare and Development office at 021 425 2095 is liasing with the Zimbabwe Catholic Development commission and a supplier to distribute 100 000 litres of JIK before Christmas.  R50 will purify 24 000 glasses of water.  Donations can be sent to Catholic Welfare and Development. 37A Somerset road. Cape Town 8000. South Africa.

The full message can be downloaded from www.vatican.va. Some short extracts are given here.
“This perspective requires an understanding of poverty that is wide-ranging and well articulated. If it were a question of material poverty alone, then the social sciences, which enable us to measure phenomena on the basis of mainly quantitative data, would be sufficient to illustrate its principal characteristics. Yet we know that other, non-material forms of poverty exist which are not the direct and automatic consequence of material deprivation. For example, in advanced wealthy societies, there is evidence of marginalization, as well as affective, moral and spiritual poverty, seen in people whose interior lives are disoriented and who experience various forms of malaise despite their economic prosperity. On the one hand, I have in mind what is known as "moral underdevelopment"[2], and on the other hand the negative consequences of "superdevelopment"[3]. Nor can I forget that, in so-called "poor" societies, economic growth is often hampered by cultural impediments which lead to inefficient use of available resources. It remains true, however, that every form of externally imposed poverty has at its root a lack of respect for the transcendent dignity of the human person. When man is not considered within the total context of his vocation, and when the demands of a true "human ecology" [4] are not respected, the cruel forces of poverty are unleashed, as is evident in certain specific areas that I shall now consider briefly one by one.”
“Children are the most vulnerable victims.
When poverty strikes a family, the children prove to be the most vulnerable victims: almost half of those living in absolute poverty today are children. To take the side of children when considering poverty means giving priority to those objectives which concern them most directly, such as caring for mothers, commitment to education, access to vaccines, medical care and drinking water, safeguarding the environment, and above all, commitment to defense of the family and the stability of relations within it. When the family is weakened, it is inevitably children who suffer. If the dignity of women and mothers is not protected, it is the children who are affected most” (no. 5).

The World Meeting of Families in January in Mexico is almost upon us and I am looking forward to participating and networking with others.  The theme is “The family teacher of human and Christian values.”
The website www.wmf2009.com has provided some catecheses from the Pontifical Council for the Family and gives us a whole list of values.  Some of these are:    Dignity, Honesty, Responsibility, Serving and generosity, Fidelity and loyalty, Justice and solidarity, Patience, Gratitude, Forgiveness and mercy, Friendship, Soberness, Respect and tolerance, Sincerity, Self denial, To know how to listen.
HEARTLINES uses TV, radio and print media to get people talking and acting on Values. A new TV series Hopeville will be screened in February.  Find out more at www.heartlines.co.za or www.forgood.co.za to see how positive values can inspire.

Zenit in its dispatch of 15th December reports on a study of the effects on children of prolonged exposure to  violence and sex on TV and in computer games.  Two studies found there to be a correlation between behaviour and exposure.   Read the report “Parents beware” on www.zenit.org  Zenit 081215.  WALL-E (2008) is apparently both a family-friendly and an environment-friendly character to be watched out for. Wall-E is short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class.

It’s all too mind-boggling for ageing parents and grandparents, the host of resources both good and evil that are out there.   

So for fun try writing a 50 word Christmas story such as these examples taken from a competition some years ago.
Francois Pienaar stood at Beit Bridge with the full team. “Well fed and groomed” the email had said and they were. Finally Santa arrived, his reindeer were exhausted in the heat.
“Howzit, Francois” he creid, “where are your bokkies.”
“Here” they shouted.
Santa looked confused, “Are you guys going to pull my sleigh?”
The Perfect Christmas gift:  Shona and her family sat around a forlorn-looking Christmas tree. Even with eight of them in the room she felt lonely. They ate and drank what there was and there were no gifts.
Suddenly the door opened. Everything came to life, even the tree. Daddy had come home… sober.

Contact Marfam

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