Jackson Community Church

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Reflections on fathering & families: what we do for love!

… there is no certainty that we are providing our children a ‘better life’ that they will embrace wholeheartedly during childhood. But we are providing them a choice that they may make intelligently as adults. — Wendell Berry

It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers … — Johann Friedrich von Schiller

Lately all my friends are worried they’re turning into their fathers. I’m worried I’m not. — Dan Zevin

Songs about Fathers & Family:

  • Father’s Day Prayer — by Maren Tirabassi
    God, I’m praying for fathers – fathers, up at night with newborns,
    fathers, bent under college debt, fathers who are good with one age of child and haven’t a clue with another. I’m praying for fathers balancing self and home and work and parenting, especially when no one seems to notice.
    I’m praying for fathers of adolescents, and for those who are adolescents themselves, as well as many who prop up their elbows when their hands slip on the gift of accountability.
    I’m praying for grandfathers and transfathers. godfathers and grieving fathers, foster fathers and adopting fathers, solo fathers and step-fathers, fathers-in-law and fathers-in-neighbor, more grandfathers – tiptoeing around divorce, and also teachers, pastors, coaches, counselors who mix a tiny bit of what they know from fathering into relationships with dozens of children, and learn the rhythm to step back.
    I’m praying for those living with their mistakes as fathers— small thoughtlessnesses that call for self-forgiveness, or deep damage needing repentance, transformation.
    I’m praying for those who want to be fathers, and those who have wanted, but it never happened.
    I’m praying for those who miss their fathers because of death or distance, deep difference or disappearance, and I’m praying those who miss their children because of death or distance, deep difference or disappearance.
    Be a parent to them, O God, on this day and all the days of the year.
    I am praying for those who have been so violated by men in relationship to them, that the very name “father” is a wound.
    Heal them with time and anger, memory, love and support.
    As we approach this civic day with its tangle of knotted emotions, draw out for each of us from your fathoms of tenderness care and strength, for our most intimate needs – named here, barely whispered to ourselves, or still hidden in the cave-rooms of our souls.

  • Amen. ii. — Wendell Berry When my father was an old man, past eighty years, we sat together
    on the porch in silence in the dark. Finally he said, 
    “Well, I have had a wonderful life,”  adding after a long pause, 
    “and I have had nothing to do with it!”  We were silent for a while again.
    And then I asked, “Well, do you believe in the ‘informed decision’?”
    He thought some more, and at last said out of the darkness: “Naw!” 
    He was right, for when we choose the way by which our only life is lived,
    we choose and do not know what we have chosen,
    for thisis the heart’s choice, not the mind’s; 
    to be true to the heart’s one choice is the long labor of the mind. 
    He chose, imperfectly as we must, the rule of love, and learned
    through years of light what darkly he had chosen:
    his life, his place,  our place, our lives …

PARENTING

Because, of course, parents are not the only ones raising their children. They are being raised also by their schools and by their friends and by the parents of their friends. Some of this outside raising is good, some is not. It is, anyhow, unavoidable. What this means, I think, is about what it has always meant. Children, no matter how nurtured at home, must be risked to the world. And parenthood is not an exact science, but a vexed privilege and a blessed trial, absolutely necessary and not altogether possible. — Wendell Berry

… You shall now become a mentor of the people … Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground — the unborn of the future … — Great Law of the Iroquois

You may think that a smile is nothing, but it is a lot. With a true smile, you make all generations of ancestors in you smile. It is liberation; it is transformation. Every mindful in-breath, every mindful out-breath, every peaceful step, every smile is an act of liberation. You offer liberation to your ancestors and to your children. — Thich Nhat Hanh (longer article:https://plumvillage.org/articles/understanding-our-father/)

Peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family. It is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth. — Menachem Begin
 
My family is everything. I am what I am thanks to my mother, my father, my brother, my sister… because they have given me everything. The education I have is thanks to them. — Ronaldinho
 
I was born by myself but carry the spirit and blood of my father, mother and my ancestors. So I am really never alone. My identity is through that line. — Ziggy Marley

GOD as CREATOR & PARENT

What God claims to love, do not deem unworthy of that love. What God has called good, do not call anything other than good. What God has animated with God’s own breath and endowed with a soul and God’s own image, do not treat with anything less than dignity. ― Nadia Bolz-Weber

For each of us, life is a journey. Heavenly Father designed it for us out of love. Each of us has unique experiences and characteristics, but our journey began in the same place before we were born into this world. — Henry B. Eyring
 
I believe in God – not in a Catholic God; there is no Catholic God. There is God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being. — Pope Francis

PRAYER — Maya Angelou

Father, Mother, God,
Thank you for your presence
during the hard and mean days.
For then we have you to lean upon.
Thank you for your presence
during the bright and sunny days,
for then we can share that which we have
with those who have less.
And thank you for your presence
during the Holy Days, for then we are able
to celebrate you and our families
and our friends.
For those who have no voice,
we ask you to speak.
For those who feel unworthy,
we ask you to pour your love out
in waterfalls of tenderness.
For those who live in pain,
we ask you to bathe them
in the river of your healing.
For those who are lonely, we ask
you to keep them company.
For those who are depressed,
we ask you to shower upon them
the light of hope.
Dear Creator, You, the borderless
sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the
world that which we need most—Peace.

BLESSING (excerpt)— John O’Donohue

Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
the blueprint of your life
would begin to glow on earth,
illuminating all the faces and voices
that would arrive to invite
your soul to growth.

Praised be your father and mother,
who loved you before you were,
and trusted to call you here
with no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you
into becoming who you were meant to be,
blessed be those who have crossed your life
with dark gifts of hurt and loss
that have helped to school your mind
in the art of disappointment.

When desolation surrounded you,
blessed be those who looked for you
and found you, their kind hands
urgent to open a blue window
in the gray wall formed around you…

MEDITATIONS ABOUT & FROM FATHERS/GUARDIANS/PARENTS

A father carries pictures where his money used to be. — Steve Martin
 
The older I get, the smarter my father seems to get. — Tim Russe
 
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. — Mark Twain
 
I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was twelve or thirteen. He said, ‘You know, today I welded a perfect seam and I signed my name to it.’ And I said, ‘But, Daddy, no one’s going to see it!’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but I know it’s there.’ So when I was working … I did good work. — Toni Morrison
 
Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad, and that’s why I call you dad, because you are so special to me. You taught me the game and you taught me how to play it right. — Wade Boggs
 
Being a father has been, without a doubt, my greatest source of achievement, pride and inspiration. Fatherhood has taught me about unconditional love, reinforced the importance of giving back and taught me how to be a better person. — Naveen Jain
 
A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society. — Billy Graham
 
Daddies don’t just love their children every now and then, it’s a love without end. — George Strait

So, being a good man is not an exam or a qualification, it changes, and it incorporates being a good friend, a good father, a good employee, a good boss, a good neighbour and a good citizen. — A. A. Gill
 
This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments – and you get the tears at the end, too. — Harlan Coben
 
I only hope when I have my own family that everyday I see a little more of my father in me. — Keith Urban
 
When my father didn’t have my hand, he had my back. — Linda Poindexter
 
He adopted a role called being a father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a protector. — Tom Wolfe
 
I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by the little scraps of wisdom. — Umberto Eco
 
It’s only when you grow up and step back from him—or leave him for your own home—it’s only then that you can measure his greatness and fully appreciate it. — Margaret Truman
 
“My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it. — Clarence Budington Kelland
 
Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, and singers of song. — Pam Brown
 
If there is any immortality to be had among us human beings, it is certainly only in the love that we leave behind. Fathers like mine don’t ever die. — Leo Buscaglia
 
Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice. — Charles Kettering
 
It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. — Anne Sexton


 

Reflections on fathering & families: what we do for love!
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