Lifeletter #128: Father Love & Our Future

Life brought me a very interesting gift this week. I listened, on two different occasions, to a young father speaking of the vastness and depth of love he had for his daughter. One of these daughters is a few months old, the other one is approaching two years. Both of these fathers said the same thing. It was one voice of love speaking through the two men: “This love caught me by surprise. It’s so deep and so powerful, I never imagined anything like it.”

I was deeply moved when I was listening to the first father speak. But when I heard the second father say it again, a few days later, I thought, “Oh, there is something going on here. Something beautiful. Something new. Something to sit up and take note of.”

I work with a lot of people who never had that kind of love from a father, whose fathers disappeared when they were young. Or whose fathers were there, but not really. Present in body only-heart and mind and soul had vacated the premises. My own father, who loved me deeply, was one of these fathers. He had to come back and tell me, in a dream my daughter had, how much he had loved and cared for me, and how sorry he was that he could not express it while he was alive.

This is the legacy we have all received from the patriarchy. Fathers may love, but so many of them don’t really know how to express the depth and fullness of that love. The intensity of the love these young fathers expressed so freely feels like part of a ‘new story’ that is emerging on our planet. We need our fathers right now. Father love is not the same as mother love. The father is the one who says to the child, when it is time, “Go now. Leave the safe and cozy nest of the mother. Go into the world and find your own way, give your own gifts. Find out what you came here to do, what you came here to give.”

The father sees the child as he/she grows, and he transmits to this young person the courage, and resilience, and power to enter into the world, to participate fully in life. He knows that this young person has skills, and talents and capacities, and these need to be seen and recognized. But he does not stop there. He tells the child, in many different ways, “Your real gift is not what you do, but who and what you are.”

A real father does not let his child off the hook. He holds her or him to this fire of becoming fully human. In the alchemy of this fire this young person discovers their life, their authentic voice, and their deepest longing. He knows how easy it will be for his child to avoid this task, to keep waiting until they feels they are truly ready; and that day never comes. A real father nudges his child, whispers to her/him fiercely, and with great love. He sings this song to his child,

“for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.”

“Archaic Torso of Apollo,” Rainer Maria Rilke

We need these fathers now. We need the awakening power of this energy that calls us toward our future. That does not let us settle into the comfortable lethargy of just getting by. A real father calls his child into the full possibility of who that being can become. He does this from the fullness and depth of his love, and he does not give up. He knows what the world is asking for and he has the courage to face that, without collapsing in despair:

“Finance. Food. Fuel. Water shortage. Resource scarcity. Climate chaos. Mass poverty. Mass migration. Terrorism. Fundamentalism. Terrorism. Financial oligarchies. We have entered an age of Disruption. Yet the possibility of profound personal, societal, and global renewal has never been more real. Now is our time.” (Otto Sharmer, ‘Leading From the Emerging Future’)

A real father blesses us all with the greatness of his heart, the bright intelligence of his love-a love that knows that our deepest longing is to show up as we are, to offer who we are, without waiting for fear to disappear.

Here is a young man who dared to be himself:
http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=6062

 

with love,
Shayla