Father's Day

First, addressing my comment in January to have a blog post for Father’s Day, I can’t find the essay I had for Father’s Day. Sorry, so goes my life. You would think a school teacher would be more organized. About fourteen years ago, I wrote this short essay on being a father. I thought it would make a good piece for today. When I find it, and I know I will, I may use it for a post in that moment.

When I write for the blog, I am aware that what is clear to me through personal experience may not connect with others. Understandings I have because of my unique experiences as a person contrast with understanding our common humanity. I tend to think and write as if I have discovered a perspective we all should share. This paragraph is a disclaimer. I do not write on this blog as if I think everyone should believe as me. The flip side of that is I have always been fascinated by the why of emotion, and by extension, why the world functions as it does. As a result of my fascination with the inner human, I have come up with answers to satisfy me. Answers I offer here but not because I think these answers should satisfy you, Blog-reader. Seek to know for yourself.

I guess that is a long way to say the following is, “As I see it.”

Commonality is part of the sub-title of this blog. Once I involved myself in a debate over homosexuality with another citizen through the letters-to-the-editor page of a local newspaper. My “opponent” in the debate would describe ironic social circumstances illustrating how illogical humans were; then when having offered no real reasoning, finish with the phrase, “Go figure.” As if meaningful explanation of the situation he described did not, could not exist; so we humans could understand very little about life in the largest sense. His contention basically: we are each trapped in an individual bubble, so my response to life (his sexual orientation) is as equally correct as all others. The writer was attempting to deal with his perception of random circumstances, and thereby justify his feelings.

He was, however, not my opponent. The circumstance of our exchange is correctly labeled “opponents in debate” on a cultural or social level, but the label is incorrect on a universal level. He was my fellow human. The failure to understand commonality of human experience as a universal truth is in part an explanation for war, and I contend among the roots of a divided Christianity. Discovering our commonality and living there is a component of entering a deeper spiritual life.

One thing I understand about us humans. We live based on our feelings. The common person, speaking outside any objective professional training, incorporates feelings into personal decisions and opinions. I think this is an absolute reality. How often in public, when close enough to overhear a conversation between two people discussing something of import to them, can the phrase, “I feel” be picked up? Very often! Listen for it when someone is deeply involved in a topic; the words fall away from social parameters, and he or she expresses the inward being. The phrase "I feel" will be voiced. Listen when someone is speaking casually and simply voices an opinion, those same words will be heard.

Believe it or not, this post is about Father’s Day. One thing all humans have in common is a relationship with a father. If all a person knows is that there is no emotional relationship, father was just the source of half the chromosomes, such lack is the basis of what is felt about the word father. One thing all humans need is a relationship with Father, Creator of the Universe. Our common experiences with fathers and fatherhood are at the core of why we feel the things we feel. Our common experience of Father, which may be either knowing or rejecting Him, is the core of all meaning.