On this Father’s
Day, we need to keep in mind the tremendous gift that fathers have given to this world. Bernie Siegel said, “If you
are worried about the future of the world, create children that love.” If we
are able to create children that love, our future is assured. Everything will
be all right.
Jane’s father was a loving man and he
loved Unity, too.
Once I was invited to attend the
Seminary at Unity Village, Jane’s father, Harold, decided he would sell the
Harpsichord he had purchased in the 1960’s and gift those funds to us to help
pay for school. For reason that escape my memory at the moment (probably tax
purposes), Jane and her father were looking through check registers from the
‘60 to find the amount he had paid for the Harpsichord. Jane noticed that as
she went through each month she would see a $5.00 check written to Silent Unity
(about $35.00 today). After she and her dad accomplished the task at hand she
asked him about the monthly checks. Harold told her that he called Silent Unity
once a month, asking for prayer, while her brother Harry was ill.
Another thing Harold did, once I was
invited to seminary, was he began practicing The Peace Song on his piano. His
goal was to someday attend the church where I ministered and play that song.
Another goal he held for himself was
to visit Unity Village and partake in the library there which is purported to
be the world’s largest metaphysical library. Sadly, neither of those two goals was
accomplished by him. He entered the hospital a week before school began and he
never left.
Harold was a gentle soul and I have
been blessed to have both a father and a father-in-law that were kind and
gentle.
Here are a couple of fun stories
about Harold. One is that he loved fruit pies, home-made fruit pies, and
apparently he didn’t feel Harriet baked him pies frequently enough. His gentle
remedy to encourage Harriet to bake more pies was a collage that he framed and
hung on the wall at the dinner table. This masterpiece of art was a number of
pictures of his favorite fruit pies cut from magazines and pasted on a board
and then framed along with its title: “Your husband’s Favorite Pies.” It was hung on the wall directly opposite Harriet's place at the table/
Harold also solved a frustration in a
unique way, a frustration that I can relate to, too. He could never find a pair
of scissors when he wanted one. Eventually he hit on this solution; he chained
a pair of scissors to the inside of the “junk drawer” in the kitchen. Now when Jane (for instance) wanted to use a pair of scissors – or at least this pair of scissors – she
would have to take the scissors and entire junk drawer up the stairs to her room to use them and then return the entire drawer, including scissors, to the kitchen.
I’ve deduced from this story that
Jane’s room may have been the scissors graveyard.
Allow me to tell you another story. This story goes
back many, many years ago, to about 1918. There were two boys in England. The
one boy that I am going to tell the story about was a farmer boy and he was
plowing his field. He had a horse in front of the plow and he was busy plowing
and tilling the soil. There was another boy, close by, who was in the river
swimming, having fun and making noise. But then, he started to make a little
too much noise. He started to scream. He called out, “Save me! Save me! I’m
drowning!” And the poor farmer boy stopped his horse, left his plow, and jumped
in the river to save the little boy from drowning. He pulled out the little boy
and revived him on shore. He saved the little boy’s life.
Life continued on for a year. The
farmer boy was out doing farm chores on the same piece of land. He was in back
of his plow and a man, a father, came to see the poor
farmer boy. He tapped him on the back and said, “Son, was it you that saved my
son’s life in the river a year ago?”
The farmer boy said, “Yes, but
anybody could have done it. I was just here and I jumped in and I pulled him to
shore.”
The man said, “Son, if you had all
the money in the world to do anything you wanted to do, what would you do with
your life?”
The farmer boy got a smile on his
face and said, “Aw, it will never happen because we are very poor. But if I
could, if I had a way, I would become a doctor. But more than a doctor, I would
research medicine to help people. I see so many of the poor people of our
village die. They need cures.”
The father of
the boy that had almost drowned looked down on the farmer boy and said, “Now
you have the money because I am going to put you through school. If you want to
become a doctor, you will become a doctor.”
Many, many years later, something big
was going to happen. The date was February 11, 1945. The Big Three were coming
together – Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. They were coming together at
Yalta. They were coming together to heal the world – one of the greatest
meetings of all time throughout all history.
But there was a problem because
Churchill had gotten deathly ill, and they didn’t believe that Churchill could
come to the meeting. But he was shipped some medicine. The medicine was called
penicillin. They injected it into Churchill, and within a day,
Churchill was revived. They said that his life was saved. And friends, that was
the second time that Alexander Fleming saved the life of Winston Churchill.
There was a time when I worked on a
construction crew building metal buildings. Some of the guys I worked with were
violent characters. Everybody had nicknames and there was a fellow called
“Loser.” Loser eventually shot a Texas Highway Patrol officer. There was
another guy called “Indian.” Indian allegedly looked too long and hard at the
wife of another man on the crew, “Nelson.”
One day Indian doesn’t show up for
work. The question, “Where’s Indian?” is posed.
“Hospital.”
“Hospital? What happened?”
“Accident.”
It turns out that Nelson’s wife says
Indian was looking at her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. Nelson and
John-John took him out, got him drunk and then beat him and left him in an
alley.”
I think that these guys may have
fancied themselves as “real men.”
Go back in your memory to the movies with
men like John Wayne, or more recently, the character “Rambo.” That has been our
idea of a “real man” – macho. He would never, ever talk to his girlfriend or
wife, or have a meaningful dialogue with anyone. He goes into the jungle with a
flamethrower, or up against the Indians or other “bad guys,” guns and fists
blazing, and that is the way he conquered problems.
I used to think about this when I was
younger, “Why is it that the guys with the biggest muscles are the ones who are
right? Just because someone (ok, pretty much everyone) could beat me up doesn’t
make them right.” (from Plato’s Republic “Justice is nothing more than the
interests of the stronger” and Lucan, a first century poet, “Might was the
measure of right.”)
In the last few decades, men have
grown up and matured to the point where, frankly, women have been for some
time.
It is okay, men, to cry.
It is okay, men, for you to be big
and strong, and to show your feelings.
It is okay for you, men, to get on
your knees and pray to God and know that God is going to come through for you.
And it is okay for us men to know
that we are not alone; that we have a greater help from God.
And this is good to know for men and women to know. We are not alone; we
all have a greater help from God; and there is no order of difficulty for God
and me in any matter.
