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SUNDAY MORNING from the pastor Happy Father’s Day. This is a good day to count our blessings for the various men in our lives who have helped us along the way. I think of my own father, who modeled the paradoxes of toughness and tenderness, discipline and risk, engagement and solitude, seriousness and play. I have seldom seen him cry. That’s not his thing. But his emotional tenderness is evident to anyone who has ever gotten close enough to him to learn all his ‘buttons.’ He is by nature, a risk taker, a dreamer. His ambitions for travel, relationships, the church, and accomplishment have been bequeathed to his descendants. But his attention to details of money, work, and responsibility have usually left his dreams waiting in the wings. My dad has a very engaging personality, extroverted, trusting of most people. There is no such thing as an ‘outsider’ to him. Perhaps since his last name is ‘Smith,’ he just figures that the whole world is one big extended family. But for all his extroverted tendencies, I often picture him in solitude, buried in a paperback novel or watching a TV movie. When I talk to my parents on the phone, I can always tell when he’s on the extension in the TV room. I won’t hear him say anything for a while. And then my mom or I will ask him a question, and he’ll not respond for a moment, and then he’ll say, "What’s that again?" He’s serious about helping people in need. And he’s often the first adult in the room to play with children. I realize that there are many today who will need to ignore that it is Father’s Day--whose fathers were (or are) abusive, absent, absorbed in their own selfish schemes, immature. Many fathers have not given fathers a good name. As a pastor, for every good father story, I hear three horror father stories. Men, we have a long way to go, and some of us need to start taking responsibility for engaging other men in order to change minds, plot transformation, and redefine honor. But for all the problems some fathers cause, there is reason for rejoicing today. Our blessings are not limited to those men who biologically fathered us. It can extend to all those persons who showed us how to move beyond our physical and emotional cocoons of security and engage the world ‘out there.’ A ‘father’ in this sense need not even be male. I have always believed that to be ‘father’ to my daughters is to teach them how to provide for themselves, show them how to engage the world beyond the protective shells of their family or psyche, and encourage them to look for the innumerable resources they have within themselves to face whatever challenges life may offer. I want them to know the paradox of the world: that it is both a dangerous and resourceful place. I want to instill adventure in their souls. I want to convince them of their own inner strengths. I want them to know the joys of relationships, and I want to instill within them a strong sense of their own personal borders. A father is not more or less valuable than a mother. Mothering and fathering have nothing to do with gender. They have everything to do with giving our children ALL the gifts they need: a nurturing home AND a push out of the nest--with assurances of course--that there is more than one way to go than down. Happy Fathers Day. --Mike |
