Quote of the Day: Father When a child is born, a father is born. A mother is born too, of course, but at least for her its a gradual process. Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to whats happening. She becomes whats happening. But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once. On the other side of the plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time. Even if he should decide to abandon it forever ten minutes later, the memory will nag him to the grave. He has seen the creation of the world. It has his mark upon it. He has its mark upon him. Both marks are, for better or worse, indelible. All sons, like all daughters, are prodigals if theyre smart. Assuming the old man doesnt run out on them first, they will run out on him if they are to survive, and if hes smart he wont put up too much of a fuss. A wise father sees all this coming, and maybe thats why he keeps his distance from the start. He must survive too. Whether they ever find their way home again, none can say for sure, but its the risk he must take if theyre ever to find their way at all. In the meantime, the world tends to have a soft spot in its heart for lost children. Lost fathers have to fend for themselves. Even as the father lays down the law, he knows that someday his children will break it as they need to break it if ever theyre to find something better than law to replace it. Until and unless that happens, theres no telling the scrapes they will get into trying to lose him and find themselves. Terrible blunders will be made—disappointments and failures, hurts and losses of every kind. And theyll keep making them even after theyve found themselves too, of course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on. And every hard knock they ever get knocks the father even harder still, if thats possible, and if and when they finally come through more or less in one piece at the end, theres maybe no rejoicing greater than his in all creation. It has become so commonplace to speak of God as our Father that we forget what an extraordinary metaphor it once was. ~originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:06:06 +0000
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