Words have meaning.
Or why would I be writing this?
It might as well be a streaming line of gibberosicity and if you can
wrap your brain around that word, even made up words have meaning. But when I say the words “Father” or “Mother”
those words not only have meaning, they also have weight to them. It’s one thing to look up the clinical
definition of the word “father” or “mother” but it’s quite another to actual BE
them.
As you’ve already known through the first few Lenten blogs
I’ve been focusing on God and Relationships and my constant struggle between
the anthropomorphic (God with white beard in the clouds pulling switches and
pushing buttons) and a more abstract almost unimaginable “other” that exists
and that we all live into and around.
Kind of like George Lucas’s “The Force” (except when he decided to screw
it all up by bringing in something called the “midiclorians” or some such crap
like that in Episode One).
Now most people reading this can probably parse the two out
no problem. My mother to whom God helps
find parking spots and still has time to watch over the world. And some discard any concept of God, or
existence thereof. I can’t NOT think
that there’s something beyond all this.
That there’s more to life and existence that skirts the unknown and
skips down byways of rainbows and lollipops and puppies run free on pristine
fields of grass. And then trying to live
into that.
Still, I struggle and part of that struggle is just the
words we use in our church (and many churches out there). Even atheists who probably have barely
stepped foot inside a church know the “Lord’s Prayer.” And many could probably recite it. But even the Lord’s Prayer I find problematic
in simply the first two words: “Our
Father…”
Because the word “Father” has so much weight to it.
Other than the first 9 months of my life, I’ve spent
probably two entire months with my father (died in 2007). Though I loved my father, we were estranged
near the final couple years of his life.
He wanted me to leave the Episcopal Church due to their stance on gays
and I told him no. Things went downhill
from there. My mother left my father
when I was an infant due to him having an affair and being verbally and
mentally abusive. Later in his life he
had obviously become a hoarder and probably wasn’t altogether “there” any more.
My step-father and I got along okay, until he kicked me out
of the house when I was 18. Once I moved
out and got married our relationship became more stabilized until a massive
heart attack took him away in early 1988.
When it has come to “fathers” – for me – it has been a bit
of a crap shoot.
Now, sure, we can take the word “Father” from the Lord’s
Prayer and reinterpret the wording and go back to the ancient text and maybe in
Greek it’s “Abba” which means something entirely different than the guy who,
hopefully, tossed a ball with you and showed you how to use a power drill…but
the word is there and, like I said, that word carries weight.
And as much as I struggle with it, I wonder how people who
have been abused by their father deal with it.
Or were abandoned by their father.
Or watched their father do terrible things to their mother.
Seeing how I was brought up.
And understanding the relationship dynamic (as best I can) of Father to
Child – I try my best to be the best father I can be. To live into (and up to) a concept where the
word “father” isn’t weighted down with absenteeism or abuse or confusion or
nothing much at all.
There isn’t a lot in this life I take seriously, but being a
father is one of those things for I want my children and my children’s friends
to say to themselves: Matt’s an okay
father.
I can live with that and hopefully into that.
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