Sunday, March 27, 2011

Post 10: The Father's Heart

“The central problem of any society is to define appropriate roles for men” - Margaret Mead

It occurred to me during the many long and sleepless nights over the past six years that my desire to be a father is a decidedly counter-cultural trait. Sociologists talk about fatherlessness as one of the hallmarks of modern Western culture- apparently, nearly 50% of American children born between 1970 and 1985 did not have their biological fathers around by the time they reached 17. While its precise sociological impact is probably debated, nearly every measurable outcome is worse for fatherless children. Physical health, emotional health, educational attainment, economic well being, and likelihood of being involved in crime. Richard Rohr (reflecting on his time as a prison chaplain) states that the one thing that every incarcerated man serving time had in common was the absence of their father (or equivalent father figure). To call the current state of affairs a crisis does not strike me as alarmist in the slightest.

In many ways, the church is a reflection of the culture. Male “absence” in the home is reflected in low male participation in today’s congregations. Walk into any weekend service- regardless of denomination or socio-economic composition- and you’ll generally find about ⅔ of the seats are occupied by women and ⅓ by men. If you assume roughly half of a congregation is married, then the ratio of single women to single men goes to 3:1 [sort of the opposite of what you see on the lines waiting to get into the hottest club]. To the outside world, the stereotypical man of faith is either nice [spineless], or chauvinistically religious. Of course, it’s not much better on the outside. In an essay in last month’s Wall Street Journal titled “Where Have the Good Men Gone?”, the author claims that men in their 20s and 30s come across as “aging frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers”.

One of the beautiful things about the gospel in my eyes is that it contains within it the breadth to address all the world’s problems. Yet there’s a sense in which the gospel becomes specific, relevant, and alive for the particular problem or issue that God can lay on a single person’s heart. One thing I discovered in my desire to become a father is that there is something much broader and deeper within me than simply wanting to raise (at most) a handful of good children. Being a father to S (and hopefully more like him) was really just a specific manifestation of my desire to see young males discover their true selves, and become the kind of men that God designed them to be. As crazy as this may sound, I sincerely believe that the church represents the best chance at facilitating the transformation of the modern male spirit. The good and noble life as modeled by Jesus is really the only hope in attempting to successfully navigate an increasingly complex world with many competing paths to salvation. While the contexts are always changing, the fundamental pillars of a man’s life- his vocation, his family, his friends, and his public persona- are subject and subordinate to the same immutable truths that were made apparent when The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Of course, the glaring thing that is missing in all of this is a leadership that inspires and draws out the greatness that truly resides in all men. With all due respect to the clergy, I have long felt that the principal burden for this kind of leadership must be born by the laity. Of course, good teaching and guidance are paramount, but what’s really needed is men who can do life with other men and model the larger-than-life existence that we all desire. Here again, the gospel’s core nature is revealed- under no circumstance could I or anyone else presume to have the qualifications to actually carry this mantle. However, it is because we believe in a God whose power is most complete in our weakness that an individual like myself can even ponder taking on this responsibility. And after all, the true essence of leadership is not to create followers of the leader, but to point others in getting intimately connected to the well that never runs dry. As Henry Nouen would say, we are “Wounded Healers”.

As the fruit of my body, Little S demands the lion’s share of my attention today. My hope is that he will one day have many brothers whose biological lineage may be diverse (or even unknown) but who trace their spiritual lineage back to me and will thus name me as one of their spiritual fathers. Then he will come to understand that while he is and always will be the Prince of our household, his ultimate citizenship resides in the family of God.





Friday, March 11, 2011

Post 9: Initiation Rites

One of the true marvels of being a father is witnessing what it takes to be a mother. It really shouldn’t surprise me, after all- observing many of my friends as parents over the years taught me the one and only iron law of parenting: moms are just way tougher than dads. However, when you witness it up close on your own child, it becomes seared into your consciousness in a deeper way. Before it was known, now it’s owned.

I suppose it all begins shortly after conception. A mother with child deals with nausea, fatigue, and all-around discomfort to varying degrees during the 9 months of pregnancy. Expecting fathers like me try to get in as many rounds of golf as possible knowing that junior’s arrival effectively puts the kaibosh on any future early morning walks down the fairway. It culminates in the whole delivery process. As I’ve mentioned on several occasions, witnessing what my son did to my wife gives a whole new spin on good ‘ol Genesis 3:16. I, on the other hand, got bored at various points during the 18 hour process and found myself playing tetris and reading about Carmelo Anthony trade rumors to pass the time between contractions. Post delivery- I don’t think the balance has changed too much. The wife is up at least once, and sometimes twice a night to nurse. Deep sleep is a distant memory not to be visited for at least several more weeks. As for me, I sometimes wonder how much my life has really changed. I think I’m doing about as much as I can, but the simple fact that I can’t nurse and I leave for work 5 days a week basically renders anything I do as the proverbial pimple on the elephant’s ass compared to the work of the mother. This realization has made me even more impressed with all the moms out there who do a “good job” raising children, and has led me to have significantly more grace for those moms who are doing a “not so good” job, or maybe even opted out altogether. The single moms, of which there are appear to be so many these days, they are my new heroes.

Richard Rohr- the man who’s writings inspired this blog’s title- often laments the lack of initiation rites for the modern western male. He attributes this lack of meaningful transition from boyhood to manhood as a principle reason behind the lack of manliness and virtue in the vast majority of modern men. (Would anyone really dispute this observation?). Specifically within the christian church, many observers are calling the lack of male participation an all-out crisis. Much ink has been spilled about how the church is producing a lot of “nice” or “religious” men, but very few men who are larger than life. On the other hand, women (in general) have childbirth and child rearing as a natural initiation rite. This forces them to come to terms with their pain/fears, and they typically need to call on a higher power to get through to the other side of the barrier. But when they do, they tend to emerge stronger, wiser, bonafide. I have to admit that the number of quality single women in the communities of faith that I am involved in outnumber the quality men by a factor of 5. Maybe 10. And this is even before they go through the whole kid thing.

I often wonder about how S will be initiated into manhood. When I reflect on my own upbringing, while I grew up in a middle class home, I like to think that I still had that edge and toughness that is a natural extension of first generation immigrant parents. I often share how my mom first sent me to sleep away camp for 1 week when I was six years old. It was largely against my will, and thus I cried like a baby every night because I was so homesick. The way she decided to deal with that was to send me to a camp that was even further away for 8 weeks the following summer. (My mom was a real Tiger Mom) During the winter months, many Saturday and Sundays between Thanksgiving and Christmas were spent waking up at the crack of dawn and setting up shop with my parents at the local outdoor flea market. This is just what we did to make ends meet.

S’s reality is unlikely to look to anything like what his father had growing up. To be frank, he is now part of the privileged. As much as I want to give him every opportunity to succeed, a part of me also feels this desire to manufacture hardship in his life. I don’t know of any other way besides struggle for him to become the man he’s destined to be. I see it already just 5 weeks into his life- I’m inclined to let him cry and figure things out instead of picking him up to comfort him. There’s a voice in my head that ironically replays the thought, “Stop being such a baby!” The wife and his grandmothers promptly scold me for being so obtuse. This will likely be a constant struggle throughout the coming years- the mother’s desire to nurture/protect will clash with the father’s desire to toughen him up. I can only pray that we find the right balance between these competing ideals. May God help us to do so.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Post 8: Helplessness

One of the most common phrases used by various visitors over the past week was, “Oh... look at him! He looks so cute and helpless”

There are times I wonder if that is a more apt description of how we, the parents feel. Maybe not the cute part, but definitely helpless. Over the first 26 some odd days of S’s life, it’s fair to say we were relatively spoiled as parents. He ate well, slept well, pooped well, and was overall a predictable baby. I almost felt guilty as my neighbors would run into me in the elevator on my way to the gym and say things like, “How come you’re working out- you should be sleep deprived and overall disheveled!”. The surreptitiously legalistic side of me would quietly think thoughts like, “I suffered deeply waiting for my baby’s arrival, so God is therefore rewarding me with a calm and happy baby”. The Pharisee within me that still sees life in terms of cosmic bargains is sadly alive and well.

Then day 27 came around. It started like any other day- the normal schedule and routines. Then, around 3 PM, the floodgates opened. There were a series of farts- but really no other indication of the tsunami of crying that was about to ensue. Like any neophyte father, I have a checklist of things that I go through when the baby is crying- is he hungry, is his diaper wet, does he need to be burped? Checked all of the above and none were the root cause. I did the five S’s from the popular DVD “Happiest Baby on the Block”- the SSHHH, Swaddle, Sideways, Swing, Shake- I subsequently kicked it up a notch and tried a few more of the things I’ve added to my arsenal- placing him in a stroller and moving him around the loft, holding him and swinging him back and forth (a great core exercise, btw), drawing isosceles triangles on his tummy, etc. All of my best efforts yielded absolutely nothing but a 10 pound ball full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The wife was asleep in the bedroom- the least I could do to help a breast-feeding woman is give her some temporary respite on a weekend afternoon. It was just me against S, and the scoreboard was 82-0, in favor of the progeny. I shall reveal my rookie colors in sharing the overwhelming panic that descended upon me as nothing I tried altered the state of affairs. I pride myself in my level-headedness, but an hour of nearly constant screaming left me frazzled. Ultimately, i placed him down, put my hand on his tiny paws, and tried to transport myself to a different place. Miraculously, I succeeded. I somehow calmed myself by simply acknowledging that there was something God was trying to tell me in this small little episode. If nothing else, this was another reminder about how little control I have over S, and perhaps even life in general. Having been formally trained in applied mathematics, my default disposition is to create a model in my head for how every system behaves. If it can be modeled, it can be understood. If it can be understood, it can be controlled. And control, of course, is the key to life going well. I had lulled myself into this sense that I had a comprehensive understanding of this little system. If he eats well and poops well, then everything else ought to be well. Instead, I was promptly reduced to a state of complete helplessness. There appeared to be little correlation between my actions and whether or not S looked like this:

or this:

All I could do in the end was just hold him close against my shoulder and tell him everything will be alright. While my right ear may be deaf after another 30 minutes of S screaming into it, I have a slightly richer understanding of this unconditional love I kept hearing about prior to S’s arrival. Naturally, I can’t help but to draw the analogy of me as the screaming, unpredictable child and God the Father as the parent. They say God is omniscient, and of course He is, but I have a sense that I’ve done my fair share of unpredictable things that leave Him bewildered and disappointed. But despite this, I can sense how God too has held me on His shoulder, and He’d whisper that everything is going to be alright.

For sure, parenting is going to try my patience and reveal the myriad of my shortcomings. But on this day, I was reminded that we are, indeed, made in the image of God.