Sunday, June 21, 2026

A Father’s Day Meditation

The way I truly think of Father’s Day is expressed in a card my daughter gave me one year. Father’s Day, the card explained, is a month after Mother’s Day because, a month later, somebody said: “Hey! Wait a minute!”

That’s not how I ever felt about it when I was the child of my father. But it’s how I’ve thought about it every year since my daughter was born.
Andy Burnham is set to become the United Kingdom’s first Catholic prime minister.

He said he was deeply moved by the life of Pope Francis.

Upon his death, he said Francis “spoke for equality and compassion and for humanity, in a world where we see political leaders target minorities and marginalize people in the search for votes”.
Pope Leo XIV says that the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual ethics must be less prioritized over “greater, more important issues.”

“We tend to think that when the Church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue.”
When I was practicing law (more accurately, trying to practice law) I worked for a solo practitioner kind enough to hire me. His son was gay, as it turned out. And I was not, then, woke. This is where I started, though, because while I couldn’t quite accept the reality of a gay man, I kept my opinions to myself. But one day he confessed to me it was hard for him when his son told him the truth. And he told me he realized that, with all the problems in the world (we were practicing family law. You really do see the worst of how people treat each other, short of criminal law practice.), why did anyone care about how two people love each other?

Why, indeed?

The metaphor of God as “Father” is a deliberate one, but not, perhaps, in the way we usually think. It is not, for example, essential to the nature of God.

In my first congregation, I had a member who had been subjected to abuse by her father. As an adult, she was in therapy to recover from that. Her struggles were quite serious, and she told me she had problems with calling God “Father,” after that.  And I couldn’t argue with her. I didn’t want to, either.

Father is a responsibility. It is not an honor lightly bestowed, it is not a pedestal in which you balance, it is not a relationship bestowed by biology. Kate Bush said it best in her song about childbirth: “Ooh, it’s hard for the man; now his part is over. Now begins the craft of the father.”

I learned in seminary that “husband” didn’t mean “spouse.” It meant a responsibility: to care, to raise, to be, well, responsible. To husband, as a farmer or rancher takes care of his land, his livestock. To make the best of them, do the best for them. Something that started in Genesis 1, and was displayed over and over again by the examples of the good fathers in the Scriptures (especially in contrast to the bad fathers who are also there).

And that best, now, includes care for people who need our care, not our condemnation or delineation. If we are responsible for others, we have to do the best for them. And that means caring for them, for who they are. Remember the parable of the sheep and the goats? Two of the examples are about providing basic human needs: food, and clothing. But the third is basic, too: community. When you visit the prisoner, you make them a part of the human community. You accept them for who they are, for what they have done. We don’t father communities, but families give communities a stronger, healthier foundation. And you can be a father to people you aren’t related to, by being a person who shares your compassion, your acceptance, and your responsibility as a father, and as a community member. I had more than one example of a father, growing up. I knew good men, and learned from their wise, compassionate examples how to be a father myself.

If God is Father, it doesn’t mean that God is essentially male. It means we should reflect God as we work the craft of the father. And God accepts everyone as they are, the way a good father accepts his children as they are. That can be hard, too. But that’s the craft of the father.

And yes, I think the father is a craft, that the relationship of the mother and child is inaccessibly different; at least to fathers. But the difference is a blessing and a strength, not levels on a hierarchy. The father is not the first of all: the father is the servant of all. 

That’s the only way love is real. And besides, this is a Father’s Day meditation.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)