DREAMS OF MY FATHER

DREAMS OF MY FATHER

            Borrowing from President Barack Obama and his meditation on his father and his father’s absence  in his book “Dreams From My Father,” I approach Father’s Day with trepidation and ambivalence.  I never knew my father – he left my mother and me when I was an infant, and I never heard from him or saw him again until I met him when I was 23.   I never really dreamed of him – it was more a deep longing for him to come see me, to acknowledge me, to tell me that I was loved.  I was always hoping, hoping, hoping, but he was never coming  - painful, painful, painful!

            I did have a dream about my father’s family last week, the first dream that I can remember that related directly to my father.  My father was not in the dream, but I met my half-brother in a convenience store, and the first thing that I noticed was that I was taller than him!  In my one actual encounter with my father, I rejoiced that I was taller than him also!   That rejoicing barely mitigated my enduring sense of loss and anxiety that it was my fault that my father was absent, that my father left me because I was not worthy of his staying.  On one level, it is deep but silly that  I blame myself (as a six-month-old) for driving away my father.   Yet it has been an enduring, core belief in my soul, a belief with which I have wrestled many times.  I wasn’t worthy as a son – that’s why my father left and never came back.

            After we got married in 1974, Caroline and I waited awhile to seek to have children.  Part of it was the work of ministry, but the main part was my hesitancy to have children.  Since I did not experience fatherhood in my childhood, I was terrified at the thought of being a father.   I did not think that I could do a good job at being a father, and I did not want to re-open those old, “absent father” wounds.  When we finally had David and Susan, I discovered that I could receive some fathering for myself, in my fathering of them.  Although I made plenty of mistakes - and I’m sure that they can enumerate them! - I found an immense joy and satisfaction in being a father.  If I am honest, part of that joy came not only from the wonderful development of David and Susan (they are great children and now adults!), but from the fathering that I received being their father. 

            So, I am feeling a bit better about my father’s being absent and unaccounted for in my life, but my ambivalence about Father’s Day remains.  He died in 1983, and I never took the opportunity to talk with him about these kinds of things.  I still don’t know what to think about my absent and unacknowledging father.   I received many gifts from many people who helped me to hear that my primary definition is not child of an absent father but rather child of a loving Father (and Mother) God, the God we know in the Black Jesus.  My mother (as I have written previously for Mother’s Day) and Gran (my great-great aunt with whom we lived), my church, pastors, youth leaders, teachers and coaches, friends and mentors, counselors and therapists, and of course, Caroline – all these folk and more have helped me to hear that I am loved and valued.  For their investment in me, to paraphrase Wendell Berry’s poem “Meditation in the Spring Rain,” I send up my praises at dawn each day.

            I wrestle often with my absent father. I feel like I continually re-live Genesis 32 where Jacob wrestles with the angel! I have discerned one powerful gift that I did receive from him: I have always had a compassionate heart.  I did not will this or really work to develop it – it was simply there for my use or for my repression.  Part of that gift came from my mother and Gran, from being raised primarily by women, who I believe are culturally and maybe biologically trained to value community and the necessity of compassion to build and sustain community.  Part of it, however, came from my absent father.  While my situation was far superior to many in the world, I felt marginalized by being the son of an absent father.  His absence did not derive from being killed in World War II, but from having consciously chosen to abandon me (and oh, yes, my mother).  So, I internalized the definition of one who is not worthy, and because of that, my heart has usually tended to move to those at the margins, who are told that they are not worthy.  It is not an act of my will – it is gravitas – the gravity of my soul pulls me that way.  It has complicated my life, and I have not always used it wisely, but it is a gift from my absent father.  More on this next week, but for now, I do have dreams from my father, though not in the way either of us intended.