RefLECTIONS from a Father's Day weekend
I was gifted with an unexpected present Sunday.
I was coming off of a significant high of optimism from my personal participation in No Kings Day events, plus a smidgen of schadenfreude regarding a reality check for the big military parade; I did not expect to have an “all this and more" type of weekend.
Father's Day is always a complex commercial holiday for me; but it was particularly difficult this year. I have personal issues coming from a fairly dysfunctional family. My daddy stayed with our family and was a provider, but he was also moderately neglectful and deeply passive aggressive. I described him as “a provider” not “THE” family provider, because both my parents were working their butts off to give three Black children a quality middle class life. The financial tensions between my parents regarding who paid for whom and what money got spent on whose “extras" reflected some deep patterns of co dependency between my parents, with much gas lighting, manipulation and outright lying. So witnessing The Big Daddy President of these (sadly UNTYING) states throw himself a birthday parade (with my taxpayer monies) and try to call it a 250th celebration of the army was particularly triggering to me. It all felt terribly familiar and brought back childhood memories. Scenes of my dad excitedly showing off brand new stereo equipment, or a new car with my mother looking grim and tight lipped in the background.
And don't even get me started on the “gift to Americans” of a 400 million dollar personal palace in the air.
My personal background left me feeling extremely moved by the five million humans across this nation who came out for the No Kings rallies. We are not responding with codependent behaviors of resentment and bitterness; as my mother did, standing grim faced in the corner.
And there IS magic afoot. Fair estimates for the number of attendees at Trump's birthday disaster are estimated at ten thousand people. That is a tenth of the number he expected. And that makes me very happy. That is the definition of schadenfreude: “delight in other people’s suffering. Trump did not look happy at his own birthday party, And that left me feeling very good.
I'll do the work on evolving my own internal spiritual moral systems; I'm just offering a reality check on where I sit –emotionally–these days.
This year's Father's Day being so heavily colored by stereotypic images associated with militarized patriarchy (guns, tanks and uniforms), I was delighted to come across Trevor Noah's 90 minute conversation with Jon Stewart:
What a nice drink of fresh water that was for me! Two men–crossing races, crossing religious backgrounds, crossing class on historical privilege– having an intergenerational conversation, comfortably discussing many ideas and subjects with frankness and authenticity. They are two men WHO CLEARLY LOVE EACH OTHER.
A healthy, balanced “bro-mance”.
Next, I spent two hours in a ZOOM conversation with the topic “Finding your inner father”. It was the fifth in a six part series (offered out of the Coyote Institute at the University of Maine) titled “Coyote Resources for Difficult Times”.
The course title references this book:
https://archive.org/details/coyotemedicinele0000mehl
And the author Lewis Mehl-Madrone shared stories and factoids on fatherhood across several cultures.
I had already found “my own inner father" in an interesting spiritual way, many years ago.
My father died in his sleep at age 87 in 2016.
As we gathered for the memorial service, my grieving baby brother was deeply put off by my grieving stepmother offering him the bed in the master bedroom where my dad had died.
I eagerly took the room and slept on my papa's pillow. Oh, the dreams and visions I had!
I saw the night my father died.
I saw him awake to a voice that confused him.
It called him “Billy”
I saw my father awaken again, later in the night, to the same voice. It was his mother, standing at one side of the foot of his bed. At the other side stood his own father.
And as astonishing as it was to see a vision of my grandparents together (they had divorced each other when my father was only two years old), what happened next was even more astonishing…
I saw my father exit his body, as a six year old child. He took the hands of each of his parents and they walked through the wall out into a green meadow.
It was a great piece of completion for me; to recognize that my poor father had been functioning with the stunted emotional intelligence of a six-year-old throughout his long and complicated life.
In the wisdom traditions of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso, you don't call on your favorite deceased relatives after they die for support, advice and assistance. You are best served to call on the ones that owe you something (because of what they didn't do, while they were alive).
So while my father's death was unexpected, I was more than willing to examine the possibilities of a different relationship with him on the other side of the veil.
About 5 years ago (ostensibly, in my narrative after a nice long opportunity to catch up with the childhood he missed playing in that meadow with both his parents), he visited me.
And he made me an offer that I simply couldn't refuse. My dad occasionally “co-pilots” with me when I drive long distances, sitting in the seat next to me.
My dad was the family driver and did long distances with ease. Now I have also become a driver who can drive those long distances with ease.
Thank you, daddy.
And last (but hardly least), if you are interested in packing your toolbox with tools that help feed your creativity muscles, try this sci-fi fantasy film that has been a quiet sleeper for the last six years and is now available over at YouTube.
Here is the trailer for “INK” a film with an interesting message on fatherhood and fathering:
https://youtu.be/ZBGeErufQdY?si=9RbtFZ6QwTA17tAj
How are all of you are integrating the bizarre paradoxes, and the cognitive dissonance all around us?