Father's Day and some thoughts on Panentheism

I love the following by one of my favourite human beings Peter Sampson. Peter was the first Unitarian I ever met as I walked through the door at Cross Street Chapel all those years ago. He has guided me in through the years in ways he will never truly know...

"Things my father could do" By Peter Sampson

Spit into the back of the fire

Turn a piece of metal on a lathe

Dance a quick-step

Ride his bicycle for miles with me on the cross-bar

Solve an intractable mathematical problem for his tearful son

Sing a comic song in the Sunday School pantomime

Play the overture "Poet and Peasant" on the piano

Build a perfect replica of a pullman car for my model railway.

The last thing I saw him do was

Fight the pain in his chest to wrestle with the clasps

On the tin trunk which was to be sent off to Cambridge

Containing all my worldly possessions.

When I received a telegram just before Christmas

To tell me I had won an award at Cambridge

He hugged me; he wept.

When he saw me play Richard the Second at school

He was full of wonder that his own son could be somebody

So different from the boy he thought he knew.

As a boy I had never seemed to be able

To satisfy his stern demands

By doing what he wanted or would have liked me to do

- maths, making models, fighting to defend myself –

But when I started to do the things I wanted to do

(Things I could do) he did not stint his praise,

Almost as if he was glad that I could cope

With what he could never understand.

Almost as if

When he knew that I could do without him

it made his day.

A couple of weeks ago I was collecting for Christian Aid at Urmston Sainsbury’s with Derek Brown the chair of  Queens Road Unitarian Free Church, one of the two congregations I serve. Derek is one of those people who knows everybody and I enjoyed observing him engaging in so many conversations. Derek is also the chair of governors at a local primary school. Three of the people he spoke to were casually dressed men who it turned out were teachers at the school. I commented that it was surprising to see so many male teachers at the school. Derek told me that actually the three men were the only ones at the school. I chuckled to myself as I thought that it was only the male teachers who came to the supermarket to buy their lunch and wondered if the female teachers had prepared their own. I’m not sure what that says about anything all I know is that it made me smile.

There was an item on the news this week reporting on the low number of male teachers, especially in primary schools. Statistics shown that one in four primary schools have no male teachers; that there are only 48 male teachers in state nurseries; that three quarters of all teachers were women; that only 12% of primary school teachers were male. This report appears to coincide with concerns in many areas of society that many children are growing up without any male “role models”, either at home, at school, or within the wider community. Some may say that this is a good thing, but I’m not sure how this can be.

Certainly when I look back at my own life I am very aware of the importance of male role models in my own personal development. Surely in 21^st century Britain we all accept the need for both men and women in the development of children and adults for that matter. I know that throughout my ministry and certainly during training that there have been several ministers, men and women, who have been important role models to me. These are people who have shown me the way; people I have turned to as I struggled to find myself within my calling; people who have offered me gentle encouragement as I have doubted myself. Not that I have put them on pedestals, if I have learnt anything in life I have learnt that nobody is perfect, we all have “feet of clay”, I know I make mistakes everyday.

In Exodus Ch 20 you will find the 10 commandments familiar I am sure to most of us. The fifth commandment reads (Unless you are Catholic when it is the fourth commandment) “Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” To me this is essentially what days like Father’s Day and Mothering Sunday (Mother’s Day) are really about. They are days set aside to pay honour and homage to those people who have parented each of us; those imperfect people who have guided our development. Now of course this can be challenging, especially if we have experienced difficult relationships with those people who have parented us. For some people such days can often be the hardest of the year, it is vital to honour this pain too.

As children we may well have looked at our fathers as almost Godlike, certainly I have at times. I still remember the pain when my dad fell of the pedestal I had created for him. The truth is of course that when I placed him there I was not truly honouring him, because by doing so I was not fully recognising his humanity. To truly honour those who have fathered us we need to recognise them for who they truly are warts and all and beauty spots too. Nobody is perfect we are all incomplete we are all constrained by our lives and the pressure it brings and we all make mistakes. No one is immune from selfishness and unloving behaviour, I know I am not.

My father had quite a “romantic” view of life, he often lived with his head in the clouds and he was not always the most responsible of people and he could certainly be deeply selfish. That said he was a lot of fun and was certainly a good story teller. In the few years that I knew him he told me many tales, many of which have stayed with me. How many of them were actually true, I'm not sure. That said I don’t think it actually matters because they all had truth within them; they possessed something of that universal "mythos" within them.

I remember when he was ill and towards the end of his life he recounted a tale when he was once at Appleby horse fare, a place he loved; where he was probably at his happiest. He was talking to me about faith and God. It was during a time of my life when I was a man of little or no faith; I certainly had no belief in God. He recounted that he saw a priest staring down into the water from a bridge. He asked the priest what he was doing and he told him that he was staring into God’s eyes. My father looked into the water and said he could only see himself and the priest. At which point the priest replied that this is where God dwells within you, within me and within everything.

Now whether this actually happened or not I do not really know. I have certainly heard versions of this tale in recent years. Here is a version I came across last week by Mark Link:

“A Little girl was standing with her grandfather by an old-fashioned open well. They had just lowered a bucket to draw some water to drink. “Grandfather,” asked the little girl, “Where does God live?”

The man picked up the little girl and held her over the open well. “Look down into the water,” he said, “and tell me what you see.” “I see myself,” said the little girl. “That’s where God lives,” said the old man. “He lives in you.”

Whether or not the story my dad told me 20 years ago actually happened to him or not, doesn't really matter to me. He did teach me a truth that has grown in meaning over the years. It stayed with me and survived my darkest days, it kept on re-surfacing. The ghost of my father still haunts me. Does yours haunt you?

When I think of God I always go back to the story my father told me, it finally began to make sense when things began to change within me some 10 or more years ago as I began to recognise the truth in it. I realise today that my greatest barrier to faith was that I did not believe that I was lovely of God's love, that I was not formed from it. These days though I see Gof in everything. This is why when I first heard  Forrest Church’s phrase “God is not God’s name. God is our name for that power that is Greater than all and yet present in each,” it immediately made sense, it echoed in my heart. This is why “Process Theology” and Panentheism (not to be confused with Pantheism) speak to me, they chime in my soul. They speak of an essence that is somehow more than life and yet it is present in all of life drawing us on but not controlling everything. Some have described this as the “Lure of Divine Love” that never leaves us; we just need to turn to it. The characteristics of which are both male and female and yet way beyond the limits of gender; way beyond the limit of time and space and human conceived constraints. When I think of God these days I think of a guiding loving hand that holds, guides and sustains and encourages you to be all that you can be.

Father’s Day brings me back to images of children learning to ride backs, or to swim, or more recently in my case learning to drive. How when you first attempt to do these things you are terrified, I know I was; how you don’t want the person guiding you to let you go. Just think about your own attempts to ride a bike. As you begin your body doesn’t seem to be working, you become aware of your awkwardness, as you start pushing at the peddles, as you wobble and no doubt fall a few times, but eventually you manage it, you are guided through it and eventually you make it. Once you do it the first time, you can do it for ever.

Did we do this on our own, no we were helped we were encouraged; we were guided through these fears we were held until we could trust ourselves. Father’s day is about honouring those who have guided us encouraged us and held us when life seemed too scary; those who gave us the faith to trust in ourselves and to trust in life and those who taught us that the divine presence is always with us.  They may not have been our biological fathers, they may not have been men, but we should honour them.

None of them were perfect and to truly honour them is to recognise their imperfection, just as to honour ourselves is to recognise and love who we are warts and all and beauty spots too.

Father’s I pay honour to you on this your special day

Happy Father’s Day

"Ghost of your father" by New Model Army

Neither God's Nor Monsters: A Father's Day Reflection

A child was out walking with his father when they came across a large stone, blocking their path. The boy decided to prove how strong he was to his dad by moving the stone out of their way. So he charged towards the stone and threw himself against it, while his father just looked on. The young boy pushed and pulled with all his might. He leaned his back into it and exerted all his strength turning his face bright red. Still the stone would not move, he was simply not strong enough to shift it. Finally, frustrated, he slumped to the ground. “I can’t do it. It’s impossible,” he said.

His father just smiled and in a quiet, gentle and assured voice simply said, “It’s not impossible. You could do it if you could figure out how to give it everything you have.” On hearing this the little boy got quite defensive and angry. He began to protest that he had given it everything that he had.

His father just smiled and shook his head and once again in a quiet, gentle and assured voice simply replied. “How could you have given it everything you had? You haven’t asked me for help yet.

Wouldn't we all like to have fathers like that? I am sure that some people had and have. Wouldn’t we all like the kind of dad that lets you give it a go with all your might and just watches over you in a loving and supportive way, encouraging you to do it your way and then when needed, and only when needed, gently offers you the help to get the job done. This to me seems like the right kind of paternal help. It is neither controlling, nor is it abandoning. It is gently and calmly reassuring. Don’t we all need someone or something like that in our lives?

Today is “Father’s Day”. Now I don’t remember ever celebrating “Father’s Day” as a child. It is something that has seeped into our culture in recent times. Personally I am glad of this. We should celebrate fatherhood, just as much as we celebrate motherhood with “Mothering Sunday” or “Mother’s Day” as it has become known in recent times.

Father’s Day is something that we have appropriated from our friends across the Atlantic. It began in 1909 when Mrs Bruce John Dodd of Spokane, Washington listened to a "Mother’s Day" sermon. It inspired her so much that she decided that she wanted to have a special day dedicated to her widowed father William who had raised her and her five sisters and brothers alone.

In 1909 Mrs Dodd approached her own minister and asked if they could have a dedicated church service for fathers on June 5^th, her father’s birthday. It seems that the date was too soon for the minister to prepare the service (I know all about that kind of pressure). Instead it was held a couple of weeks later. The idea seemed to take off from there. The whole state of Washington soon adopted it and began celebrating Father’s Day, by folk wearing flowers, on the third Sunday of June. According to the tradition a red rose honours a father still living, while a white flower honours a deceased dad (I can see why this part of the tradition has not transferred to the North of England where a white rose and a red rose mean something very different).

Father's Day soon caught on. In 1916 President Wilson declared that he approved of the idea of holding a special "Father's Day". In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge took this further and proposed a day whose aim was to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations."  This led to the formation of the “National Fathers’ Day Committee”, in New York, in 1926. It took another 30 years before Father’s day was officially recognised by the US congress. Then in 1972 President Nixon established the third Sunday of June as an official nationally observed day.

  

Now as I have already mentioned I do not remember marking "Father’s Day" as a child, unlike Mothering Sunday. That said I do remember my much younger half sister creating things for her dad when she was at primary school.

My childhood relationship with my dad was inconsistent. From the age of 11 until I was about 17 I saw nothing of my father. My parents separated when I was about 2 or 3 and my siblings and I would spend weekends and Tuesday evenings with him. When I was 11 this ended and it was not until my later teens that I once again began to spend time with my dad. He contacted me at my place of work to inform that my granddad was dying. It's strange but I immediately responded and went to the family farm, even though it had been half a lifetime since I had seen them. I remember my dad saying to me "I knew you'd come"and how it filled me with guilt and shame. We spent the next three or four years attempting to bond and get to know each other, but I don’t think we ever fully did. My father died when I was 21 and for the last few months of his life I helped to nurse him, but I do not think we ever truly got to know one another. I know that this is not a unique experience.

 As a child I saw him as my great hero, as this outrageous and exciting figure and then for many years I saw him as quite the opposite, as irresponsible and selfish. The truth is that neither view is wholly true or untrue. He was a human being with many faults and many qualities. I am like him in many ways and not like him in many others.

I had other paternal figures during my childhood some I bonded with and others I did not. I never really connected with my stepfather, truth be told I lived in fear of him. That said I have always had a deep affection for my maternal grandfather, in fact I still do. I remember as a little boy going to visit him on his market stall and him showing me his bionic arm (like the six million dollar man). He had a small scar on his arm, from an injury during the war. I also remember him sending me for small bottles of pop and of him helping me to open them. He always played the same trick and we both allowed it to go on for many years. I would not be able to open the bottle and so I’d ask my granddad to help me. He would then try, but would not be unable to do so either (not even with his bionic arm) and so he’d pass it back to me and somehow this time I would find the strength to open the bottle. Beautiful memories! Yes I will be thinking of my dad and my granddad on Sunday. I know how blessed I am to still have my granddad with me (sadly my granddad died early in 2014).

We all need someone or something to guide us, to help us learn about courage and strength, to help us overcome the obstacles that life throws in our way. We do not have to face the boulders in our path alone. We all need fathering in one way or another. It does not necessarily require a man to look up to, but we need someone or something that offers those qualities to us, just as we also need to develop those very same qualities within ourselves. That said it is important to remember that father’s are not just about strength and fortitude, they are also about caring and warmth too. Thank heavens that fathers are encouraged to develop those qualities today.

Father's are far from perfect and perhaps it's a mistake to idolise them. They are as human as the rest of us. They are neither God’s nor monsters. One of the worst days of my life was they day my father fell off the God like pedestal I had placed him on. That said one of the most beautifully liberating days of my life was the day I was able to see him as a human being, with his own unique talents and brokenness.

I am sure that many folk have memories of their dad’s teaching them to play cricket or football or taking them for long walks and or watching them perform all manner of things; just as I'm sure that folk have memories of dad’s who seemed angry, silent, or distant. I’m sure many folk have memories of dad’s who taught them responsibility; just as I'm sure that many folk have memories of dad's who were unable to spend as much time with them as they would have liked or dad’s who didn’t know what to do with the time they had with them. Not all dads are jolly and carefree; some dads are awkward and uncomfortable. 

Yes “Father’s Day can be difficult for many folk, it can bring up many painful memories and it is important that we acknowledge this. Father's are not always perfect.

Who though can claim to have been the perfect son or daughter? I’m sure I’m not the only one who has rejected or rebelled against or fought with their father at times. I wonder how many folk who are fathers themselves have experienced the same troubles with our own children.

To be a father to anyone is no easy task. In many ways it’s even harder in the modern age. Many people talk about the pressures of modern motherhood, but we hear very little about the pressures of modern fatherhood. The truth is though that the modern father has to learn to be an expert juggler too. This needs to be recognised. We need to see that the care and effort required to father is no easy task. Yes they all fall short, they all make mistakes, and they all struggle to find balance and to be patient with their sons and daughters. They are not God’s, but then neither are they monsters. Like everyone they are struggling to do the best that they can in an ever more demanding world.

I pay homage to father’s and to fatherhood on their special day. We should celebrate those who stand with us as we struggle to move the rocks in our paths, those that offer gentle encouragement. We should all pledge to develop those paternal instincts within each and every one of us so that we too can stand besides those who need that calm yet strong encouragement when they meet those boulders that sometimes fall in everyone’s path.

Happy Father's Day