We are asked to be strong to not show our feelings, to suck it up and to move on.  We are asked to be rocks and the world seems surprised when we become that.  But even more disbelieving when we show that we are soft inside.  Its not easy being a man because of all of this training we have done to ourselves.  All of us.  Women want a man who is strong, and yet a man’s true strength cannot be known until he allows himself to break and become vulnerable.  We want that steady force beside us to make us feel confident when in truth we need to learn to be confident within our own selves.  When we ask for it from without, trouble surely is waiting, for all things genuine begin first within, not without. We know a thing deeply within ourselves first before we can speak of it or teach it or become it.

Today I will not spend any part of this day with my children.  I cannot tell you how much this pains me, how much it hurts.  The day is a reminder of the hurt that the other who is also a parent to my children wishes to exact on me.  My children have been told an untruth that is in the words of Anais Nin the way we see the world less as it is but more as how we are.  It is not easy when you were the provider for your family putting in long hours to give them a good life only to be ridiculed, criticized, destroyed before your children and behind your back.  I know it sounds like I am belly aching, but in truth contained within this is a great big question.  Its not obvious as first.

So I take this as a sign that I must look deeply within.  Touch the Spirit that lies in the center of all of this, that lies in the center of all things to draw from it the inspiration that I need to see things rightly instead of wrongly.  For just as wrongly has the mother of my children seen me and expressed to them how she thinks I am, I too have seen her wrongly.  I have not seen the world rightly and this has been the source of my troubles……very hard troubles they are.

So today I embrace the mystery, I embrace the love that I am.  I radiate with it and while I may not have the answers I can keep embracing the mystery and asking what it is I am to learn, to open myself completely before it all and not be afraid.  For it is there that the Source of all things resides and it is in that presence that all things are possible. It is our own divine inspiration.  Literally.

Today is still Fathers Day.  My children will be aware of it.  One will be thinking of it dourly and angrily, seeing only what he felt he did not get from life and from me while another will be feeling guilty that she has not stood up to speak truth to power (or madness).  In both cases, though, I will shower them with my love even as one has vowed the meanest hardest things.  But nothing rational will explain any of this and the only way through this is to take the stone I have been asked to become and render it into fluid moving molten magma.  The greatest strength is in our ability to be gentle and kind and compassionate. Even when we are alone.  Even when we are reviled or hated.  Even moreso then.

Being a father IS about being strong, but its not the kind of strong that you might think.  Sometimes it asks of you to be way stronger than you ever thought you could be.  Such is the calling and the discipline required. With the day being unusually cool I am going to be blowing glass and thinking of my children and wishing them all great things in their lives even if it means not being with me.

If these people are dreams that will fade right along with the nightmares of my life, then so be it.  If they persist and transform, even better.  If they move out of my life then I suppose this is how it must be for them, but I will not pause in telling them that I love them, have always loved them, and will always love them without expectation of anything in return.  Surely the mystery of All lies in the center of me radiating love even if it does not itself receive anything back from me.  True love is like this I suppose and its less something that you learn as you become.  The love I feel can no longer belong to the Soul of dysfunction.  There MUST be a better way.  While it is not my fault that a spouse has said and done the things she has to my children in an effort to brainwash and propagandize, I most certainly was drawn to this person who contained all of these potentials within her since before I had even met her (and it was all there for me to see if I had been willing to do so—I saw and ignored them).  I think we think as parents that we are supposed to be perfect, but we aren’t.  We are human. We become parents not knowing how to change a diaper let alone how to care for another human being in such an intimate and involved way.  We are all rookies driven by love and the desire to become and be and learn and grow.   If we can manage to stay one step ahead of accidents or disasters of one kind or another, we consider ourselves lucky that we didn’t burn down the house because we left the stove on while sleeping exhausted after being up all night with a fussy baby, or that we haven’t lost our temper because we have just had to deal with a baby for the ninth night in a row who can’t seem to sleep for longer than two hours at a time.  We grow through these things, we learn what we are made of and we marshal the resources needed when we feel as though we are somehow falling short on one end of it or another.

Nope.  None of us are perfect.  Fathers are not solid rocks of granite and women are not oozing worlds of wondrous sensual beauty.  Sometimes we fail and cry and wonder and fear and fall apart. And this makes us perhaps all the more beautiful because of that.  Will our  children accept that as good enough? One does and one does not, so it is a lesson to me that if I am to take anything from this it will not be because another has chosen to go a different way or that my way is somehow off, but that my way is golden and I know it and must follow it no matter what, even when others say otherwise (crazy others at that!). Trying to make it all make sense is like grasping the wind. Instead of that, being able to feel it when it comes instead of wrapping our minds around it is the greatest service.  Not all things lead to wisdom by being known.  For now, I embrace the mystery and wish all fathers a wonderful Fathers Day.

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