I've always loved this picture of my oldest son at a California rest stop. It is perfect for a brand new year. I know - let's make this a brand new year for fathers. Let the wisdom, ideas, insights, and stories we post here make us all the wiser.
Be sure and read the great comments that have been posted below. Note to Grendal (comment #1 in the Instruction post): The Roman Catholic Evangelist in me is aching to ask you about the reasons you decided to leave the Catholic Church. I will always grieve to hear someone has walked away from what I am willing to die defending. However a conversation about dogma is not the purpose of this blog. Here is a site for those who have questions about the Catholic Church. www.catholic.com
Here's part of an e-mail that came this morning.
"You are fearless with this stuff--I'd be worried about
attracting a bunch of Church-haters. God bless you for your boldness."
I'd like to think it was bold of me, but actually I am just naive about blogs. Another good reason to have every comment sent to me before it is posted. Church-haters be aware: No one will read what you type here. Don't want to waste a moment of the time God is giving me on earth. Hopefully you feel the same way. Hatred can make you feel strong but it causes your heart muscle to atrophy. What use is such strength?
Hatred is a cousin to whining.
I tell my boys not to complain. Hating or complaining is like falling down. Just like some boast of 'going the distance' when all they are doing is falling down a mountain. Loving takes muscle; falling takes nothing. Encouragement, like climbing, takes muscle. When you 'go the distance' climbing a mountain, you know you have accomplished something of value. And you have a better view of things below.
Sometimes I still whine - I'm working on it. I feel much better when I climb.
Okay all you climbers - send comments to me at: holyfamilynow@mac.com and I can post them to the comments section or as part of a post. Whatever is easiest. Whatever you'd like.
All for now. Happy New Year - let's make it one!
1 comment:
I am a 53 year old man. When I was a boy it was common place in my town in Oregon and in my family to tell jokes about black people. We did not think much about why we did this. We just thought it was funny and harmless. I had never physically met a black person. There was no history of a problem between my parents or grandparents and black people that I had been told. We were just free to speak and think about them in this way. We used names to refer to black people that were derogatory and demeaning. They were despicable words. Perhaps we felt superior or powerful by doing this but mostly we just felt ignorant freedom in behaving this way. I did not direct these jokes to a real person after all. Then an African American girl whose family were poor migrant workers came to town and she joined our 6th grade class. Her name was Isabell. For the first time in my life I knew shame. I felt the shame of all those evil hearted words that had been shared among the people in my sheltered world that I felt were somehow known to this innocent girl. I learned that by participating in the attitude of prejudice, I was contributing to the very real actions of prejudice perpetrated against people of color at the time. The young MAN in me wanted to protecte her from this ongoing attitude in society at the time. I wanted to be her friend.
Of course today we all are a bit better a relating to each other and at least we no longer openly express such blatent racial prejudice without suffering the criticism of our society. But for me personally, after 23 years of education and another 23 years of professional life during which time I have been lucky to work and live with people of all races, I still feel the guilt and vulnerability of how my soul was spoiled by those mindless actions of my youth.
My point of this story is for the comparison of how we men today are still allowed to think of and treat women in our society. In our minds and in our words and in our actions we behave with unbridled freeedom to view women as sexual objects. We teat them as less intellegent or otherwise less capable than men, or we simply ignore their right to equality and pay them less anyway or deny them equally responsible jobs. Most of us do this quietly or without thinking much about it as there is no consequence for doing so. Even the men who are blatently arrogant toward women we somehow treat as funny or even more manly. It is no surprize how we men have been drug into this distorted view of women given the constant bombardment of unreal images of women and relationships based on sex that are portrayed in the media. We see these images every 12 seconds or so. But there are no women who wish for this image, for this treatment, for this victomizing prejudice. So far they still have to put up with it because men allow it to happen. But a real man can find the right images in Mathew 1 verse 18-22 where God tells Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, to take Mary for his wife with no expectation of physical reward but rather to protect her and be a servent to her for the greater glory of God's plan. That takes a real man to step up to to those expectations. Similarly the image of Saul in Acrs 9, the big mouth persecuting Pharisee that no one was willing to stop, who was admired for his zelous behavior, had to be struck down by God and humbled so that latter he could teach us men the right way to think and act as he did in Philippians 4, 8. To be a real man we have to stand up for the right thing even when the majority of people in our society don't yet get it. So my advice as a father is to admit that I have been ignorantly and sometimes willingly guilty of perpetuating a hurtful image of women and that I need to be the model for my sons to learn from. I need to openly teach them about the traps of wrong ways of thinking about women. We men must teach our sons and daughters that a man's obligation is to raise women up in society, not contribute to holding them down.
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