Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, June 18, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today is Ellen and my 26th<\/sup> wedding anniversary. It\u2019s a pretty important day in my life. Most of you know Ellen; perhaps you can understand how very fortunate I feel to have her as my life partner. Our very best project together has been being the parents of two wonderful boys \u2013 men now \u2013 who bring us great pride and joy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So another thing about today is that it\u2019s Father\u2019s Day. Today I want to say a few things about fatherhood, which is pretty important to me — being a father myself twice over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bible might seem to be a place to start; it\u2019s often a place we start when we think about important things. But the Bible \u2013 at least in my reading \u2013 turns out to be an odd place to look for understanding fathers. Think about the New Testament. Joseph is a most unusual father because he had to adjust to the fact that his wife-to-be was pregnant even before he married her, and not by his doing. He seems to have been a good father, but he pretty much disappears in the gospels after the nativity story. Jesus isn\u2019t a father in any human sense. Nothing is said about the disciples being fathers. The same with Paul. And so forth: there\u2019s just not much there about fathers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are more fathers mentioned in the Hebrew Testament, but not many positive exemplars. Moses had a father named Amram. But his wife, after hiding the baby for a few months, put him in a basket to float him downstream. Amram didn\u2019t play much of a role in Moses\u2019s life growing up. Abraham had a son \u2013 Isaac \u2013 quite late in life. Then God commanded Abraham to sacrifice the boy, and Abraham was ready to do it until God stopped him at the last minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Samuel was the son of Elknah, born after Elknah\u2019s wife, Hannah, had prayed for a child. When that prayer was answered, she sent the young boy off to serve the priest at Shiloh. So Elknah didn\u2019t play much of a role as father. David was the youngest of Jesse\u2019s eight sons. He became a shepherd until Samuel came for him and sent him on the road to serving in King Saul\u2019s court. Eventually David became Saul\u2019s successor as king. I guess Jesse was a good father, but we don\u2019t know much about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Get the picture? There\u2019s not much about what fathers do in raising their children in the Bible. It isn\u2019t a story about fathers who help mold their children and set them on the right path. I don\u2019t know quite what to make of that. But I will say it\u2019s one of the reasons I\u2019m uncomfortable with people saying the Bible has a lot to teach us about marriage or the family. Its focus is elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And there\u2019s this: the Bible, or at least most translations, keep referring to God as \u201cour Father,\u201d confusing \u201cfathers\u201d with \u201cGod.\u201d The nature of \u201cGod\u201d is a beyond-me topic for me, but I\u2019m pretty clear that being a father isn\u2019t being God-like. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good way to think about it. There are too many mistakes and too much impatience and worry in being a Dad to have it resemble God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So let me speak more personally \u2013 about my experience. About being a father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m a father of two wonderful sons, Tommy and Robbie. I also had a wonderful father, and he had a father. (The fathers going further back I only know about from family stories and obituaries and census records.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n My father\u2019s name was Frank, and his father\u2019s name was Frank. Frank (Senior) always called my dad, \u201cSon.\u201d Invariably. I don\u2019t think I ever heard him call him anything else. Neither Frank was ever given to expressing much emotion (they were men from New England, after all), so it took some years to realize that part of my grandfather calling my dad \u201cSon\u201d was an expression of how important it was that he had a son. Being a father meant a lot to him, even if he didn\u2019t seem to show that much in an outward way. I now think it may have been the most important thing in his life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, \u201cSon\u201d (Frank Jr.) had a son \u2013 that\u2019s me \u2013 and now I have two sons. And the older one has two daughters. So it goes on, and on, and on. Today, on Father\u2019s Day, I miss my own Dad more than I could ever tell you, and I miss my grandfather, too. And today, especially, I get why it was a big deal for my grandfather to have a son — two sons, actually — how proud he was, and how many big expectations he had for his sons. (I also miss Ellen\u2019s dad, a very special man, and I know she does, too.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Big expectations: I\u2019ll come back to those. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Time has passed; I\u2019ve grown up and, well, grown old. I called my mother\u2019s father, at his request, simply Bob or Bobby. That was just who he was. He was delightful. I called my father\u2019s father (Frank, Sr.) \u201cDad\u2019s Dad.\u201d It seemed perfectly straightforward, until I began to realize that my friends had various other names for their grandfathers, but none of them had a \u201cDad\u2019s Dad.\u201d When I became a grandfather, my son Tommy asked me what I wanted to be called, and it was immediately clear as day: I wanted to be \u201cDad\u2019s Dad.\u201d And so I am. Once I had a Dad\u2019s Dad; now I am Dad\u2019s Dad. If my granddaughters were here today, they might tell you I do a lot of \u201cgoofin\u2019 around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s more than just the name or the title. I\u2019ve begun to look like my Dad\u2019s Dad. My walk looks like his, and so on. I\u2019ve stepped into the role, and there\u2019s nothing more important to me than being a Dad and a Dad\u2019s Dad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So what do Dads do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n I once heard a child psychologist talk about being a father. I love this pithy sentence from him: \u201cMy job is to love my children unconditionally and to design consequences.\u201d The loving your children unconditionally is big and mysterious in some ways, but I think you get that part of his instruction. \u201cDesigning consequences?\u201d I think he meant children need to learn that what we do has consequences, some good, some terrible, and in growing up we need to be aware of those consequences. We don\u2019t want our children to experience what happens if they get hit by a car so we tell them they shouldn\u2019t play in the street and that there will be a consequence if they disregard that guidance. They might have to go to their room, or sit on the front steps for a while. We design consequences, mild, instructive consequences that show them the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being a father is about providing, about supporting, about teaching. Sometimes it is about comforting your children when they are sick or sad, and sometimes it is about setting limits when you think children may cause harm to themselves or others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Being a father is also about tickling and about singing silly songs. It\u2019s about \u201cgoofin\u2019 around.\u201d It\u2019s about walking your child back to sleep in the middle of the night. It\u2019s about building Lego castles and cars, about special birthdays and birthday cakes, about helping your child ride a tricycle and then a bicycle and then (if you\u2019re lucky) a unicycle and then watching him ride a very tall unicycle (that\u2019s a giraffe) in big parades. Or so it was for me. It\u2019s about helping with math homework and showing how to drive a stick shift car. And then it\u2019s about having him show me things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A very hard part of being a father is having expectations for your children. Expectations. In a word or two: it\u2019s important to have expectations and it\u2019s just as important to let them go. How do you know when it\u2019s right to do each, having expectations and letting them go? That\u2019s a toughie. I realize how important it was to me that my dad had expectations for me: high expectations. He wanted me to do well in school, and perhaps become a chemist like him. I know that it was hard for my dad when I veered off in directions different from his expectations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We had some tough conflicts over his expectations and my choices. I\u2019ll spare you the drama; we got through them, eventually. And again, I want to say that I\u2019m glad he had those expectations, and even gladder that he could let them go. He let me make my own choices. I still live within the framework of some of his expectations \u2013 those expectations I chose to accept. I try to be someone he\u2019d be proud of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fatherhood: having expectations, presenting those expectations day-by-day, and then letting them go, or at least some of them. That\u2019s the deal, along with unconditional love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe that\u2019s what I find so strange about the dads in the Bible. There\u2019s nothing said about their expectations for their children. Not Joseph for Jesus. Not Amram for Moses. Not Abraham for Isaac. Not Elknah for Samuel. Not Jesse for David. For Jesus, for Moses, for Isaac, for Samuel, for David what\u2019s in the Bible is all about God\u2019s expectations for them, and the importance of embracing those expectations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I listen for God\u2019s expectations, too. That\u2019s supremely important. Most weeks that\u2019s what we\u2019re here talking about, God\u2019s expectations for each of us and for all of us. Still, I would have wanted Jesus and Moses and Isaac and Samuel and David to have earthly dads, too, who had expectations for their sons, high expectations \u2014and then let them find their own way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Happy Father\u2019s Day one and all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also posted on River View Friend<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, June 18, 2023 Today is Ellen and my 26th wedding anniversary. It\u2019s a pretty important day in my life. Most of you know Ellen; perhaps you can understand how very fortunate I feel to … Continue reading