"Our Father"

The Algonquin Indian Big Thunder divided up his world

        into two realities,

                both essential, 

                        but different from each other.

The Great Spirit is our father,

        "in all things, 

                the air we breathe,"

                        he wrote,

                                but "the earth is our mother."

Of all the images of father in the sacred texts of the world,

        I like this one best.

 

As long as I have been a minister,

        the image of God the father has had scant acceptance 

                among religious liberals.

I went to divinity school

        when the feminist critique of patriarchal religion

                was at its most imaginative, angry and insistent.

Mary Daly's ground-breaking, influential work, 

        "Beyond God the Father,"

                was published just before I became a theological student.

Daly was a former Catholic scholar

        who knew patriarchal religion from the inside,

                having studied at the Vatican.

When she railed against the Church,

        she had the goods.

Daly's thesis was based in the insight

        that if God is father,

                then men are gods – 

                        just look at the way our society is organized.

Everything from domestic violence to our economic system

        is rooted in this wild imbalance of power.

I still think she has a point.

 

The quest for balance has put father out of action 

        in recent years.

Some have sought explicitly female images of the divine,

        and the search has uncovered important ancient history

                and empowered a new generation of women

                        with spiritual practices to use for self-knowledge and healing.

Others have simply dropped the gender 

        out of divinity altogether.

 

I could say more,

        but something holds me back.

As I prepared for this Father's Day Sunday,

        and the trip to Cleveland this week 

                for the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly,

                        I have also been arranging a trip to New Jersey,

                                where my parents live,

                                        and the meeting I will have 

                                                with the Hospice agency

                                                        about the care of my dying father.

So my mind keeps wandering to the specifics

        of my father's life – and imminent death,

                and the impact he has had on me,

                        

and on what this has to do 

        with these spiritual images

                and issues I have studied.

The personal, as we feminists have often observed,

        is the political,

                and the boundary between the two is neither crisp nor clear.

 

May Sarton – a Unitarian Universalist, 

        to whose work I frequently turn in search of the right words

                for a memorial service –

                        wrote a poem titled "My Father's Death."

"I shall not be a daughter anymore,/

        But through this final parting, all stripped down,/

                Launched on the tide of love, go out full grown."

Losing a father is a rite of passage,

        as daughters and sons give up not only their fathers

                but their role as children.

We give up seeing ourselves

        as the object of the parental gaze,

                approving or disapproving;

                        we are no longer a reflection.

 

When anyone we love dies,

        our Unitarian Universalist philosophy teaches us,

                the one we love lives on inside us,

                        becomes part of us.

And as we know ourselves, 

        "full grown," as May Sarton puts it,

                we see what parts we carry on

                        from those who have gone before.

 

The closer we come to my father's death,

        the closer I look at his life, and mine,

                and see how much his spirit

                        is still the air I breathe.

 

My father's formal education had a late start,

        as he spent the first couple years of college

                at Juilliard Conservatory, 

                        studying music.

In his family, music was God.

But he realized that the cornet

        was not his vocation,

                and eventually decided to go to college.

 

At the University of Chicago, 

        where my father studied English,

                one teacher, Norman MacLean, 

                        shaped his intellectual imagination.

MacLean later became quite well known   

        as the author of stories about his early years in Montana;

                one book, "A River Runs Through It,"

                even became a feature film.

At my father's 50th Chicago reunion,

        he sought out MacLean – 

                also an old man by then,

                        and told him what an influence he had been.

It was an uncharacteristic sentimental gesture for my father.

 

My father went to graduate school in English at Harvard.

When the war broke out,

        he enlisted in the Army.

One of our favorite family stories

        is that my father, filling out his enlistment form,

                wrote in the tiny space allotted for his academic background, 

                        "ENG" for "English,"

                                but which the Army assumed meant "Engineering."

They sent him to radar school. 

 

The war years brought marriage to my mother,

        my older brother Richard,

                overseas assignments in Japan and the Philippines,

                        and eventually, employment.

Because of his long academic sojourn, 

        comfortable financial background

                and the war, 

                        my father did not hold a job

                                until he was in his mid-thirties!

When he did go to work,

        he joined the wave of post-war corporate workers,

                settled down at RCA, 

                        and never left.

I note that he hired RCA's first African American engineer.

        

Always a liberal, 

        principled, progressive,

                but too quiet for his own good,

                        my father is not a religious man.

Raised in a non-observant Jewish home,

        when he married my mother, a Protestant,

                they resolved the problem of what to do with the children

                        by joining a Unitarian Universalist church.

There my father and mother became active members.

But his core philosophy still reached back to his Chicago days,

        and the golden era when he was educated 

                in the "great books" and classical tradition

                        of – dare I say it – patriarchal thought.

He named my younger brother after Geoffrey Chaucer.

We were requested to recite long memorized passages from Homer

        at the dinner table.    

I can remember asking my father once if he believed in God.

"I believe in Apollo," he replied,

        and he meant it.

 

I learned to play the piano,

        and showed some signs of following in his path to conservatory.

But music became too emotionally fraught for me.

I could never sit down to play

        without my father suggesting 

                how to improve some incredibly minor bit of phrasing,

                        until I nearly refused to play in his presence at all.

 

He was a ruthless editor of my writing too.

Just a couple of months ago,

        after reading a sermon I delivered here,

                his only comment was, 

                        "I found some typos."

Still, he took pride and interest in my work,

        and Unitarian Universalism has been a strong bond

                between me and both my parents.

 

I know that the parts of myself that are self-critical,

        that struggle to perform up to ridiculously high standards,

                that withhold for fear of not being good enough,

result from the influence

        my father had on me.

No child can grow up without certain emotional wounds,

        and those are mine.

But I also know that my love of music and writing,

        and the good strong liberal values 

                I learned from watching him,

                        counterbalance those deficits.

 

My father spoke to me about his philosophy and principles.

He encouraged me to think for myself

        and tell him what was on my mind.

Because of him,

        I enjoy the company of men 

                and have never stopped learning.

 

May Sarton writes,

        "Alone now in my life, no longer child,/

                This hour and its flood of mystery/

Where death and love are reconciled,/

        Launches the ship of my history."

It's a compact and beautiful way 

        of speaking about how we become 

                who we are,

                        and how grief is the nexus of growth.

Her words also suggest how our words for the divine –

        whether they be God the father, 

                the mother, 

                        or a degenderized image that makes no distinctions,

                                have meaning only if they connect us

                                        to these life experiences:

to the love, 

        the loss, 

                and even the wounds

                        by which we grow.

 

The air we breathe, 

        Big Thunder said,

                is the Great Spirit, our father.

And the earth is our mother.

Some of us may be inclined more strongly towards one or the other.

Some of us had a mother or a father 

        but not one of each,    

                for loving parents of either gender – alone or in partnership,

                        can make a good home for children.

Some of us have adults in our lives 

        who have been parents to us,

                even though we were not related 

                        by biological connection

                                or by kinship.

                

But we all still need the air we breathe

        and the earth that holds us close.

We all still need the father and mother elements of the universe

        that balance and draw out 

                the life energy within us.

Whatever image of divine

        we may choose to give to this relationship,

                it is the one that gives us life,

                        teaches us to grow,

                                and someday leaves us to be on our own.

 

During these sad times, I remember that

        the air I breathe is all around me.

I cannot separate myself from it,

        nor live without it;

                the Great Spirit, our father, is in this air

                        and in all things,

                                past and present,

                                        and yes, even in the days ahead."