My sermon on Restarting Fatherhood . . . .

2007 UUMen Sermon Award Winner

Restarting Fatherhood, My Up-Down Solution

by Frank Mundo

Reading ….

From Forgiving your Father for Fathers Day, By Mark Brandenburg:

The memory of my father stays with me like a shadow.

It’s a shadow filled with a complex array of gratitude, sadness, disappointment, and awe. It is the same for all men, for there’s no escaping these memories. They are deeply imbedded in us, and they impact us every day of our lives.

And whether you’re trying to live up to your father’s expectations, prove him wrong, or rid your memory of him, the shadow of your father will remain. Each effort demands its’ own cost. And each effort will keep the shadow close to you.

When you have children, the memories of your father grow stronger. The wounds that haven’t healed are poised to be inflicted on them. We all carry wounds from our father. We all feel the pain of not “measuring up” in some way. But whatever your wounds, it’s important to remember this: What is not healed in you will show up in your children. It will show up no matter how hard you fight against it, and no matter how hard you try “not to be your father.” It will show up, and transcend all your efforts to prevent it.

What’s left to us is a simple choice. Would we like to live with these wounds, and transfer them to our sons and daughters, or would we like to explore them, and find a way to heal them? To be an effective father is to understand the power of the memories you make with your child each day. These memories can be touched by the wounds from your childhood, or they can be touched by forgiveness and love. And while the path to forgiveness can be difficult, it’s worth every ounce of effort you give it. And most importantly, it is a gift to your children, and the generations that follow them. (1)

* * * *

Let me start with a short piece written by Ken Druck, author of The Secrets Men Keep:

“When my Uncle Nathan was 70, he visited his father’s grave tucked away in a corner of a cemetery in the Bronx. He stood there facing the headstone, the November wind ruffling his silver hair. Suddenly, his body started shaking. Tears streaked his face. “Dad, you never even put your arms around me,” he sobbed, spilling out a secret grief that he had carried around with him all these years. “You never touched me. You never hugged me. Where were you when I needed you?

It may surprise us to know that the most powerful common denominator influencing men’s lives today is the relationship we had with our fathers. The events and circumstances may have taken place years, even decades, ago. They may appear irrelevant to our lives in the present. But if we look beyond the surface, we will discover, as my Uncle Nathan did, that Dad is still very much with us today. Much of our behavior and many of our attitudes toward living can be traced to our fathers. Whether our dad was physically or psychologically absent, whether he died when we were young or is still alive at a ripe old age, whether we consider him a good father or a poor one, our fathers are in us. Every man hears the silent voice of his father inside his own head.

One of the most important clues to discovering who we really are lies in knowing who we were in relation to our fathers. One of the best-kept secrets for many men is the extent to which they allow themselves to be tied to their fathers, dead or alive.

…… our stories uncover a deep yearning for Father’s love and acceptance.

And some, like my Uncle Nathan, will journey to their own graves with that secret longing unsatisfied…”(2)

How do we mend ourselves with our fathers… and mend our sons and daughters with ourselves?

What about my father?

My father was a physicist. During WWII he was swept off a Radar Mast of an American Destroyer in mid Atlantic and was lucky enough to be plucked out of the sea by a sailor tied by a lifeline to a following British Destroyer. Later my father participated in the war by getting American planes filled with bombs into the air and then bailing out so they could flown by radio control to Germany to blow up submarines in their bunkers. Joe Kennedy was in my father’s group. He didn’t make it out of his plane. There is my awe.

During my younger years my father designed guidance systems for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. In his work he was rarely home. But he provided for us, we had what we needed but rarely saw him…. with his travels, working late at night and on weekends. We never wanted for anything… in a material sense. There is my gratitude.

He was never there at any significant event in my life that I can remember… he was somewhat like the Lone Ranger… always riding in and out of town. Like many men of his generation… “he wanted to raise us but [it seemed] he didn’t want to know us.” There is my sadness and my disappointment.

I never understood my father’s work. I was never introduced to it. I feared it. Would I be lost at sea… or disappear from my family when I became a man, and began to work?

I recall the cold shock of horror I received… like nothing I had ever felt before… when, as a child I saw the movie, Moby Dick. You will recall from that story… that Captain Ahab had a fury and an obsession with catching the White Whale… Moby Dick… the whale that had bitten off one of his legs. He pursued the whale relentlessly across several oceans and finally, when he did come upon the whale at last he jumped into a whaleboat and harpooned the whale. As the harpoon rope raced out he got caught in the rope and was pulled over the side. The next scene – and the one that struck horror in my heart… was the shot of Captain Ahab’s body, lashed to the side of the whale as it surfaced and then sank under the waves.. Ahab’s lifeless arm swinging back and forth. A “symbolic” last farewell….

For years I had thought that the horror I experienced in that movie – and it was truly visceral - was based on an unconscious recognition of the consequences of uncontrolled anger. However, in preparing this sermon I have come to an entirely different awareness. Ahab was very likely my father ... and his predicament … one that lay in wait for me were I to become passionately committed to work.

What was it that I expected to get from my father that I didn’t get? Was it hugs? Was it his presence at my games and plays or recognition of me as a person? Edward Frost puts this question felt by so many men… better than I…..

“What is it about fathers that has them brought so often and kept so late in the court of their children’s judgment? … What is it about the task of fathering so many fumble with and finally put aside?(3)”

When I became a father I promised myself to be more involved with my children... and for a time, it worked. I raced to daycare. I took time off for birthday parties. I went to school events and games. I sat in bed with my youngest son and read him stories. We had a favorite book on dogs. All kinds of dogs. He could recognize and name them all.

I must tell you about one of those “moments” that a parent has, which will always bring a smile to my lips. We were in the park, and I was pushing my son along in his stroller. A middle-aged lady came along with a small dog on a leash. Seeing Frank Jr. she knelt down, scooped up her dog and presented it him. “See, she said, “…doggie”. My son gently patted the dog on the head, then looked the lady square in the eye and uttered a single word. “Chihuahua.”

My other son… I used to put him in a waste basket and fly him around the house – he holding on to the edge for dear life… and I… well making airplane noises while we buzzed by wing chairs and over ottomans. Cherished memories…

As my children grew older, I grew less and less able to be a part of their lives. Divorce was part of the equation. But an equally large part is that I never had had any experiences of son-to-father. I didn’t really know how to relate. I didn’t know how to be involved… and perhaps worse yet…. I didn’t sense the loss of what I really didn’t have before… from the son side of the equation. Indeed it wasn’t until I arrived at being older that I was suddenly struck with the profound sense of loss of shared experiences … experiences that never were and which will never be.

Thinking again about my father…. and what I had missed…. I recalled an Edward Frost sermon. I wrote to him for the text…

What did I expect from my father, I wonder? What was it I so desperately needed, after it was too late, after he could no longer give it? Robert Bly… said what boys and young men need from older men is blessing -- because too few are blessed by their fathers. Blessing is the bestowal of approval and encouragement. "Blessing," says Webster’s Dictionary, "is a thing conducive to happiness and welfare." And without the blessing of the father all else, it seems, fails to be conducive to happiness or welfare.

For some of us, it seems, without the father’s blessing, his approval and encouragement, nothing fully satisfies. Always there is the rising urge to take the small or large success and burst with it through memory’s door shouting, "Hey, Dad, guess what?" And if he is not home, or occupied with his failings, or deep in his despair, his hopeless anger, his envy of his children, where, then, shall we go for blessing? (3).

I came to realize I had stumbled on the source of the profound sense of loss and sadness I had in my life. I wondered if other men felt it. I sought out their counsel, their wisdom and, finding many with similar backgrounds and stories, experienced their grief. Out of that I came to realize that fathering is an inter-generational thing. It doesn’t get fixed so easily in a single generation. What is needed is what I came to call an “Up-Down Solution.”

The “Up” part is fixing yourself and your relationship with your own father …with forgiveness. Returning to thoughts of Mark Brandenburg, who wrote the words of our reading this morning….

Forgiveness can be a powerful and transforming experience. It is a way of giving up hope that the past can be changed. When you forgive your father, you accept the past as it was, and ready yourself to move forward. No matter how abusive or absent your father was, you accept what happened, and stop blaming your father for your current problems.

Forgiveness is not a one-time event. It happens emotionally when we feel the pain and sadness from letting go of a better past, and what we might have had. It happens when we stop blaming our fathers, and stop using anger to shield us from our sadness.

Forgiveness happens in our thoughts when we see our fathers for who they were, and not for whom we wanted them to be. It happens when we end the illusion of the selfless father, who looks after our needs first and foremost.

Forgiveness is complete when we allow it to unfold. It is a process, and it may take years. But as each layer of anger peels away, your opportunities expand. The energy that was devoted to anger and regret can now be devoted to things that matter: passion, truth, and love…[ and being a better father]. (1)

The other part of forgiveness is to try to forgive yourself. To help with this I would offer you a poem written by David Ray. It’s called "Thanks, Robert Frost."

Do you have hope for the future?
Someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.

Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was.

Something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time
it seems we could so easily have been, or ought...

The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear.
And I too, and my children, so I hope…
will recall as not too heavy the tug of those albatrosses
I sadly placed upon their tender necks.

Hope for the past, yes, old Frost,
your words provide that courage
and it brings strange peace that itself passes into past,
easier to bear because you said it, rather casually,
as snow went on falling in Vermont years ago.

The “Down” part of the solution is to bless your children. It could be as simple as a phone call this afternoon. Call your children and tell them how much their life has meant to you and that you are proud of them. Recognize and honor the choices they have made if you can. If you can only acknowledge their choices, do that and speak to them of how their “being” has added to your life.

Speak to them of the time they were in the stroller and knocked some lady on her keister with their juvenile brilliance.

It is quite likely, when you’re pushing up daisies, they’ll remember your phone call. Maybe even make one of their own….

* * * *

(1) Mark Brandenburg, Forgiving your Father for Fathers Day

(2) Ken Druck, The Secrets Men Keep

(3) Edward Frost, sermon: Life with Father

Men's Network Male Involvement in Church

UU Men's Network – UU Church, Male involvement

Are we losing our men, and if so, why? Church after church reports that roughly two thirds of new members are women, and nominating committees report that men are more difficult to drag on into serving positions of leadership. More men fail to serve out their terms of service, for whatever reason, and men report, often sheepishly and occasionally with surprise, that they're feeling excluded from decision making and the object of "politically incorrect" gender bashing. A panel of UUMeN members and one woman minister gathered to discuss the causes and solutions to these problems. Jaco ten Hove of UUMeN moderated a panel consisting of Dick Michaels, Abhi Janamanchi, Carol Rosine, and Tom Owen-Towle.

Dick Michaels asked, "In a world when the role of men is changing and in many ways being devalued, what is the role for men? The dilemma for men is particularly poignant. Men tend to disengage, and so our congregations become less and less male." He then wondered whether our problem resides in our inability to frame our existential questions in terms of anything but disengagement or the "competitive society."

Abhi Janamanchi, the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, reported that in his church, two thirds of new members are women, and there are more women than men in leadership positions. His nominating committees report more difficulty getting men to volunteer than women and that they tended to resign prematurely. Many of the men stated they had held leadership positions all their lives and just wanted to be and come to church and "help out" now they are retired. Still, Janamanchi wondered if the reasons were deeper. In another church men reported feeling excluded and solutions they presented were characterized as "Oh, that's typically male!" Perhaps we have redefined who we are to eliminate patriarchy. Our test is the number of women, but we have not redefined that space to honor men.

Carol Rosine is minister of First Universalist of Franklin, MA, which grew from 20 over 400 members under her leadership. She reported that men had been watching the women who were deeply and enthusiastically involved in "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven" and other feminist programs. The men wondered if women were more emotional or spiritual than men, but finally decided that it was up to them to find their authentic voices. Rosine, though a feminist, knew she had to minister to both men and women, but she was puzzle how to reach them. The men's group experienced several false starts and usually fizzled out after a few months. The key event was that "Men With Tool Belts" rebuilt a house on property the church owned, and this experience was the basis of a renewed and finally successful group. Finally, she began to meet with them for two hours a meeting. They began by talking to her about what was it like to grow up as a boy, what they worried about and other issues that generally are taboo among men. The men in the Franklin congregation wanted her to know there are different sides to being a man. There is a playful side involving sports and competition and "potato cannons." There also is a side that longs for relationship and to nurture and be nurtured. In most places in their lives it is safer to keep a lid on their emotions and not to make themselves vulnerable. In the process of talking to her, they began to talk to each other and discovered the church is a safe place to expose their longings and vulnerabilities. They also learned the importance men play in the lives of boys and in their becoming men. They found a way to achieve all these goals in a satisfying and meaningful way that did not challenge their images of themselves as men.

Tom Owen-Towle, the outgoing president of UUMeN, is co-minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego, CA and a long-term leader of the men's movement in Unitarian Universalism. He said the future needs to be different from the past. He sees the challenge as needing to create a culture that is male enhancing and affirms masculine energy and gifts, but that does not accept that dominance at the expense of others is a necessary part of maleness or of masculinity. He also stated that no man or boy should have to look outside of his own church to find support.

In the audience participation, some disagreement emerged, particularly with the role of feminism in UUMeN, but there was general agreement that men were not entirely pleased with the new world. One participant saw that "matriarchy" was generally viewed as always positive and nurturing, while "patriarchy" generally was viewed as negative and isolating. Another reported that he didn't view all men as potential rapists. One man emphasized that most sexual violence actually occurred in prisons and was against other men. Others agreed that perhaps men felt a sense of loss, since they were having to move back from the table to make room for women, but that women were experiencing exhilaration in finding full humanity.

From the animated looks on the faces of the participants, and from the continuing knots of men talking as they departed the room, they enjoyed the discussions.

Reported for the Web by Bob Hurst

Oh Brother Where Art Thou ?

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

An essay by the Reverend Kenneth S. Beldon

Published in the Fall, 2001 issue of

UU Voice, An Independent Journal of News and Opinion

The scene is by now familiar to me, although, even in the midst of joy, it is somewhat dispiriting. Another new member Sunday: our membership book is opened once more to receive the signatures of the new people who desire to join our liberal religious community. The names of the new members are read aloud. They come forward to the front of our sanctuary to sign their names and to receive a flower and a packet containing introductory information about our congregation. They are welcomed by both myself and representatives of the Board. After each person signs the book, they remain standing near the pulpit with the other new members. When all the names have been read, the congregation stands and reads together a covenant of welcome and affirmation to the new folks. The assembled worshippers applaud, and then, the ritual concluded, everyone takes their seats.

Glad tidings and good feelings abound on the day that we welcome newcomers to our congregation. We all partake in the excitement that comes from knowing that our faith is being shared among a greater number of souls. And yet, I can’t help feeling that there’s a pattern emerging during the several years that our new congregation has been welcoming new members: a subtle indication that our liberal religious community may not be reaching a group of people in need of the liberating message that Unitarian Universalism has to offer. When I look at our membership roster, when I try and track attendance and participation in our congregation, I arrive at this question: Where, I wonder, are all the men?

The relative scarcity of men in my congregation is evident not only on Sunday morning. It can be perceived when our committees gather, when religious education classes meet, when social events bring us together simply for the sake of shared time. When I examined the visitor’s book for the last six months, women outnumbered men by a substantial margin. The concern for gender equity is preeminent when our nominating committee considers names for Board positions: are there enough men willing to serve so that there might be equal numbers of male and female?

Such issues are not limited to my congregation alone. A panel discussion at the General Assembly just passed in Cleveland wondered aloud about the status of men within our religious movement by asking the question, "Is There a Future for Men in Unitarian Universalism?" It was reported that nearly two thirds of new members in many of our congregations are women, and that congregations are often hard pressed in finding men to serve in positions of leadership. We also know that a clear majority of the people now informational and seminary training for the ministry are women. Over half the ministers in our denomination are women. Women, it seems, are stepping up to the call to service in our congregations, while men, it appears, are stepping out. To say it plainly: we don’t need fewer women, we do need more men.

The various feminist and women’s rights movements in the history of our country have affected our association more profoundly than any other American denomination. This ought to be a cause for unequivocal celebration for men, not just for women. It would be an overstatement to say that there are as many varieties of feminism as there are women, but feminism cannot be seen as monolith, asserting only one ideology or view about the status of women. There are certainly varieties of feminist thought that diminish, if not demean, the experience of men, and doubtless some of these ideas are found in our churches, operating in such a way to make some men feel unwelcome and unwanted. But, as a man and a minister I can say that I have found male bashing to be extremely rare and it is usually bound up with other issues regarding the use and abuse of power within our congregations.

The practical commitment to feminism I’ve most often witnessed in our churches is similar to how my ethics professor, a Catholic Sister of Mercy, in divinity school defined the word. She said that feminism was a belief in equality and mutuality between the sexes grounded primarily, but not exclusively, in women’s experiences and was also committed to the flourishing of all human beings. The concern for the flourishing, the full development of the potentiality in all our lives, male and female, can be said to be rightfully the aim and goal of our liberal religious movement. At their best, our congregations aid in the cultivation of our gifts, our strengths, our healing, and our ministries. With its concern for wholeness and a commitment to standing against all those elements in our common existence that inhibit and destroy the fullness of lives, feminism provides us a vision of our communities as places wherein lives are transformed. Such a promise is not limited to women, but exists as a challenge to men to find fullness in our lives as well. Such an opportunity may be daunting to many men who are used to patterns of relationship that are circumscribed within the set patterns of "male experience." I fear that the men most in need of healing and supportive community in our congregations are the ones least able to communicate their needs about how congregational life can be relevant to their lives.

In the first year of my ministry, there was a young couple in the congregation that has since left the church. They were having financial difficulties, problems with chemical dependencies. Their marriage was failing and they would be splitting up in the near future and leaving the area, going their separate ways. I knew all this from the woman in the relationship. We talked regularly as she made her plans to leave. Although she knew that what she wanted was to get out, she also worried about her estranged husband, his lack of community, and social isolation. I resisted calling him for some time, figuring that he would call me when he was ready. Finally, just a few days before he was to leave town, I contacted him, and we met that afternoon.

When he arrived at my office, he was clearly on edge. His self-esteem was shaken. When he spoke he rarely looked at me, his eyes rimmed with the redness that came from consistent tears. He shared his story, punctuated with sobs. As I listened I realized that he and I shared some commonalities.

We were both the same age and both went to established northeastern prep schools, separated by less than a hundred miles. He was clearly a jock in high school, the kind of fellow student around whom I felt nakedly inferior, covetous of what I believed to be his self confidence, contemptuous of the apparent ease with which he roamed the campus and commanded attention while I nervously attempted not to be noticed.

Yet, here he was, barely a decade after prep school, weeping in my office about his failed career, poor financial choices, and his inability to save his marriage. He was no longer the young man whom I would have so arrogantly and enviously judged in high school. He was now just a broken man, shuffling about in the shattered pieces of his life. On the other hand, the woman, now his ex-wife, was able to reach out to me, to other people in the church, able to speak of her pain and also to start to plan her life as it would be after they split. He left town, his pain barely known to anyone in the congregation and barely communicated to me. I think of him often. I wonder what more the congregation could have offered him. I know that I could have offered him more of my time, more of my presence, but instead assumed he would take the initiative if he wanted to talk. How easily I fell into a conditioned response to engage in an emotional laissez faire. Our nascent men’s group was not in existence at that time. In his silence, he suffered alone.

The social critic Stanley Aronowitz has written: "One point to be made is the extent to which men become victims of the emotional plague of always having to be in control; how much we are deprived of genuine recognition not only by our mates, but also by our children. Male power comes at the price of emotional isolation."

Aronowitz’s message is that traditional ideas about masculinity construct the need for power and control over one’s life and emotions by restraining the need for being close to others. Being in true relationship with another person, or to ourselves, means that we must be willing to risk, to let our guard down and venture into emotional or relational terrain where asserting unilateral control can only be a bar to authentic self realization or disclosure. Under traditionally masculine terms, the extent to which one is vulnerable is seen as an index of inauthentic male experience. Because of this, many men, especially straight men, avoid being vulnerable, as we are not often rewarded and more than infrequently chided for such behavior. The primary male virtue has been traditionally regarded as strength, albeit an emotionally truncated, self-sufficient one, and the primary male vice has been perceived weakness or being "soft".

Although the incident occurred nearly three decades ago, we can remember Edmund Muskie crying on the campaign trail in 1972 as an example of a man who very publicly transgressed the norms of supposed real manhood. His perceived sin was that he sought psychological counseling. In both seeking support and then in his reaction to its being made public, Muskie violated two of the key rules without which traditional conceptions of masculinity stand: not being self sufficient enough to solve his problems on his own and then expressing his pain in plain sight through his tears because, of course, boys (and by extension, men) do not cry. But, of course, boys and men do cry and the question is whether our congregations are safe places for men to express the whole of themselves and the holes within themselves.

However we define that overused word, spirituality, it consists in part of our response to this question: how do we live in the presence of the unbidden in our lives, the grace or the sorrow that visits us not through the mechanism of our control or our strivings, but simply through our being alive? As our congregations become places where not only reason and rationality are enshrined as our birthright, men, who are more conditioned to focus on what we can control, are often left behind. We need a language of male relationship to self and other that speaks of our ability to receive from life, and from each other, without it be construed, or felt, as weakness or passivity.

Even as some aspects of patriarchy are no longer as powerful in our society, the cultural attitudes of many men still retain some of the traditional, sexist ideas concerning the proper role of men in relation to women, other men, and their own selves. Within the past decade we have seen religiously affiliated mass mobilizations of men in the form of the Promise Keepers and the Nation of Islam’s Million Man March. Whatever the important differences between these groups are, their affinities are telling. With both groups the rhetoric of male responsibility is established as part of a response to what Barbara Ehrenreich calls the male "flight from women." To counter this flight, (which is perceived as a double departure from the traditional male roles of protector and provider), the man is urged to atone, (re)assume the role of the head of the household, and return to his position as guarantor of the well being of his "dependents."

Such language is highly problematic when examined from a perspective that seeks to posit equality and mutuality as the ideal in gender and sexual relations. Not only is such language deeply homophobic, for it presupposes heterosexuality as the absolute norm, but it assumes that male supremacy and a hierarchical ordering of gender relations are natural and inextricably embedded in nature or God’s law. In the view of such traditionalists, men are not so much estranged from women as they are from their realization of the (divinely ordained) law. In this view, straight men occupy the top human rung of the great chain of being. Such was the language affirmed by the Southern Baptist Convention a few years back, when it called for wives to submit gracefully to their husbands.

Our Unitarian Universalist tradition calls men into a much more nuanced conversation about the meaning of being a man: one that wants to celebrate and affirm the varieties of men’s experiences while also insisting that such valuing occur in the context of religious community that refuses to privilege male lives over female lives. Being a man in this environment is not always easy. Especially for men of a certain age or generation, men who may not have been raised by feminist moms or in homes where power and decision making was shared equally between the sexes, or who have worked in environments where men did one type of work and women another type, such men have seen many of the changes in broader society reflected, often more intensely, in the life of our churches.

In response, some men have retreated from the lives of their churches out of the misguided, but understandable, notion that the only way to share power with women was to hands over the reigns and step out of the way. While perhaps motivated by a desire not to impede progress, such steps can also be a simultaneously retreat from church life, a belief that "it’s not really my church". Acts motivated by such thinking can only mean that there are more men who are less personally invested in the lives of their churches, giving less to them and getting far less from them. We are called to engage in the life our churches, even when we might be challenged, rather than slip quietly away from them.

There are other men who, seeing the various ways in which women’s history and identity is celebrated in our congregations, feel as if they are being left out and desire men’s experience to receive the same sort of validation. As I overhead a man once say at a UU conference, "If there’s a women’s history month, shouldn’t we have a men’s history month as well?" While such questions seem to aim at equality in form, they elide the very real history of male power and privilege, both in the religious and secular worlds. As UU men we need to be honest about the inequalities that are a part of our common inheritance and recognize the corrective differences that are undertaken to uncover and uplift aspects of our heritage that misogyny and sexism derided or helped to render invisible. The time when men’s experiences were taken to be normative for all is a world well lost. We are called to a prophetic, not a reactionary, masculinity that does not begrudge women when their voices are sometimes heard louder than our own. We have more important work to do than feeling as if we are in constant competition to get our message, the value of our own lives, out there.

When I picture what men need more than anything else in our congregational life, I think of an exercise that some of our congregations use to help in the process of discerning individual gifts and ministries. A box is divided into four quadrants, on the vertical axis lies these words, one written on top of the other: like/don’t like; on the horizontal axis lies these words: one written next to the other: good at/not good at. A person fills them in according to which box dictates which combination. With the idea that we all bring gifts to our religious communities, and also aspects of ourselves that we would like to have augmented, the boxes are a diagnostic tool. Often the most important box for people is the one that combines those skills that a person likes with the self perception that greater proficiency is desired in those areas. If what lies in there for many men is a greater need for self-revelation and authentic relationship with ourselves and others, then this box holds the beginnings of the map to wholeness. Only by being fully present to ourselves, even in understanding that what and who we love is often not within our control, then we might come to find ourselves and begin to make a home in our houses of worship.

Edward Frost's reaction to IF poem ....

What do I find frightening about Kipling’s poem? Well, I remember one of my psychology professors, talking about all these "ifs" for becoming a man and saying, "Your work, ladies and gentlemen, is to be done among those who whisper to themselves, 'But what if I can’t?'"

Kipling’s man was the idealized Victorian model. He was epitomized by the British Officer, ramrod straight on his white horse, buttoned up to his beard in a wool uniform in the middle of the desert prepared to show those ragged beggars screaming before him how an Englishman dies. "Mad dogs and Englishmen," wrote Noel Coward, "go out in the noonday sun." If, by some chance, this quintessential male did not die out there buttoned up with his boots on, he went home to teach his children how to be just like him -- endeavoring not to get too close to them in the process. His children, like those ragged beggars out there, were in need of being civilized.

Obviously, most of our fathers and most of us have not come home fresh from gifting the world with civilization at the point of our ceremonial swords. But what all that really boils down to is -- Success. It is impressed upon the male -- which is what fathers are made of -- that, whether they live in the age of Hannibal or Hank, they must, above all, be successful. And they must be successful at everything from running companies, preaching sermons, playing basketball in the driveway, earning a living, staying alive, and obviously, above all, not failing. For some men, successfully cutting in line at the exit is about the only hope for self-esteem they’ll have today. I contend that that’s a lot to handle and that, for most fathers, it doesn’t leave much left over for blessing our children, for being a successful father, or for even being conscious of what that might mean.

IF ... a poem by Rudyard Kipling

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,

If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard KiplingKipling wrote If with Dr Leander Starr Jameson in mind. In 1895, Jameson
led about 500 of his countrymen in a failed raid against the Boers, in southern Africa. What became known as the Jameson Raid was later cited as a major factor in bringing about the Boer War of 1899 to 1902. But the story as recounted in Britain was quite different. The British defeat was interpreted as a victory and Jameson portrayed as a daring hero.

Male Manifesto

MALE MANIFESTO*

I. Men are beautiful. Masculinity is life-affirming and life-supporting. Male sexuality generates life. The male body needs and deserves to be nurtured and protected.

II. A man’s value is not measured by what he produces. We are not merely our professions. We need to be loved for who we are. We make money to support life. Our real challenge, and the adventure that makes life full, is making soul.

III. Men are not flawed by nature. We become destructive when our masculinity is damaged. Violence springs from desperation and fear rather than from authentic manhood.

IV. A man doesn’t have to live up to any narrow, societal image of manhood. There are many ancient images of men as healers, protectors, lovers, and partners with women, men and nature. This is how we are in our depths: celebrators of life, ethical and strong.

V. Men do not need to become more like women in order to reconnect with soul. Women can help by giving men room to change, grow, and rediscover masculine depth. Women also support men’s healing by seeking out and affirming the good in them.

VI. Masculinity does not require the denial of deep feeling. Men have the right to express all their feelings. In our society this takes courage and the support of others. We start to die when we are afraid to say or act upon what we feel.

VII. Men are not only competitors. Men are also brothers. It is natural for us to cooperate and support each other. We find strength and healing through telling the truth to another – man to man.

VIII. Men deserve the same rights as women for custody of children, economic support, government aid, education, healthcare, and protection from abuse. Fathers are equal to mothers in ability to raise children. Fatherhood is honorable.

IX. Men and women can be equal partners. As men learn to treat women more fairly they also want women to work toward a vision of partnership that does not require men to become less than who they authentically are.

X. Sometimes we have the right to be wrong, irresponsible, unpredictable, silly, inconsistent, afraid, indecisive, experimental, insecure, visionary, lustful, lazy, fat, bald, old, playful, fierce, irreverent, magical, wild, impractical, unconventional, and other things we’re not supposed to be in a culture that circumscribes our lives with rigid roles.

* from Knights Without Armor by Aaron R. Kipnis. P. 93

The Spiritual Needs of Men

by the Reverend Howard Dana

Sunday, April 7, 2002

In America, women attend church at a significantly higher rate than men. Thousands of mainline Christian churches, Catholic parishes, and Jewish synagogues have found their numbers dwindle through the past decades, often leaving them with congregations where the majority is elderly women. Granted, American women statistically outlive men by a decade or two, but this cannot entirely explain why so many houses of worship lack men. It cannot explain why so few younger men, single or married, are joining traditional churches. It cannot shed light on the success of fundamentalist male-oriented religious movements such as the Promise Keepers. Worship service attendance data does not contemplate the reasons people go to church. Demographics may erroneously assume that if half the country's population is male, half of every congregation should be male. But I would argue that while men and women come to church for some of the same reasons-faith development, intellectual stimulation, community-they come to church for some different reasons as well. Ignore these differences and any congregation will see a decline in male participation.

For the last two hundred years in America, the church has become an increasingly feminine institution. This is not to mean that it has become a feminist institution, but that it has wittingly or unwittingly marketed itself to women and girls and expected men and boys to continue participating as extensions of the women and girls. This may seem strange for an institution that has formally and informally held women out of formal leadership positions for the whole of its history. But the feminization of the American church has had as much to do with the nature of its male leadership as it has had to do with the people it served. Let's face it; men who are attracted to the clergy tend to be better in touch with their feminine side than other men. They tend to like relationships and enjoy the company of women. They care about the "housekeeping" aspects of church administration. Clergymen-Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish alike-have historically been educated men able to talk in a manner that better attracted women than men. And up until the past 30 years or so, these clergymen depended on a largely female volunteer labor force to help run the church. Sure the Board members and committee chairs might be men, but women filled out the committees. They ran the Sunday school and the church socials. They took care of the church's linens and sacred objects. They cooked, cleaned, sewed, and raised money for the church. Women's groups in churches and synagogues often were a locus of power. The Women's Alliance in any Unitarian Church was a force to be reckoned with. They held money and power. It was their church.

But the days of men attending church because of familial obligations are over. There are enough "worthy" distractions on a Sunday morning for any man who wants to weasel out of coming to church. There has to be something in the worship service that feeds men, or they will find little reason to attend. They have to be able to get from church something that they cannot find elsewhere. They must see themselves as a part of this institution. Churches must be attentive to the spiritual needs of men and boys.

Of all the things that draw men and boys to church, I think there are two critical functions that congregations can do for their male members. Churches can provide a place for men to feel and to surrender. Feeling and surrender. Very few places in our culture encourage men to be in touch with their feelings and to surrender control. Rarely do men have the healthy opportunity to express sorrow, anger, fear, or joy in public. Rarely do they have the opportunity to unburden themselves of the many responsibilities men psychically carry. I would like to deal with feeling and surrender individually.

You may have seen the popular bumper sticker that reads "Real men love Jesus." I usually see one of these just after a very large pickup truck has roared by me on the freeway with its American flag flying. "Real men love Jesus." Where to start to examine this? "Real men" assumes there are ways of being a man that are not real. It assumes that not all men measure up to the standard of "real." But the sticker says that real men love. It says they feel emotions and can express them. This turns the popular notion of a "real man"-cold, tough, strong, silent, in control-on its head. It says real men really aren't what we thought they were. Real men love. And real men love Jesus-another man, for Heaven's sake! Overlay religion and same-sex affection on love and you are light years from that strong, silent, "real" man. The bumper sticker audaciously claims faith can so fully alter masculinity that loving another man becomes a benchmark of manliness. "Real men love Jesus," says real men have feeling. "Real men love Jesus," says real men have faith. I still question whether the yahoo who just cut me off with his monster truck is really a sensitive new-age guy or not, but there is his bumper sticker for the entire world to see. Maybe there is hope after all.

Whether they realize it or not, men come to church to feel. They come to hear words and sing songs that invoke emotion. They come to church because there a space is consistently opened in which they can experience grief, joy, fear, and anger in the company of other people. In church men are not expected to stifle their emotions or pretend they don't exist. Men can cry in church in a way that would be unacceptable elsewhere in public. Men can express doubt and worry in church because they understand how their expression adds to the communal trust of a congregation rather than diminishing their individual manhood. Men can be angry in church-angry at God, angry as the social injustices of the world, angry with their own failings-angry in a proactive, healthy way, angry in a way that promotes positive change rather than further destruction. Whether they realize it or not, men come to church to feel.

I would hope that our congregation would be an emotional/spiritual health club for men. I would hope that by routinely coming here and thinking, praying, and reflecting on life, our men might be better able to weather life's emotional storms. I would hope that by making a commitment to our congregation, men might find a path to their deepest feelings, leading them to a place of inner peace. This peace will then radiate out into their families, workplaces, and neighborhoods. Just as a health club will do a man no good unless he goes there and works out consistently, church attendance can only yield what a man is willing to put into it. If there is little dedication to exercise, there will be little gain in health. If there is little dedication to a man's spiritual and emotional life, there will be little gain in personal insight, relief from pain, or growth of love. A man who finds the church brings his life a greater sense of fulfillment will do well to encourage other men to make a similar commitment. I know I work out better at the gym when there are others around me going about their fitness routines. I know I work out better at the gym when there is a trainer to answer my questions or help me with an exercise. For me, going to the gym is as much a social activity as it is a fitness activity. I am there for myself, but I know I am part of a larger dedication to health. Church is the same thing. The changes a man will feel from week to week might not even be noticeable, but over months, years, or a lifetime, the cumulative effect is impressive. Men come to church for emotional fitness. They come to church to feel.

Men also come to church to surrender. They come to gladly surrender themselves to some larger life process. They come to lay a burden down. They come to be relieved-to worship and be renewed. I know that the word "surrender" takes many of you somewhere you would rather not go-especially if you are a man. But I do not mean it in the way you think. I do not mean to say that men (or women for that matter) come here to give up. They do not come to grovel or be subservient. They do not look for a place to be subjugated. More men come to church to step into the river of life with everyone else. They come here to see their place in the larger workings of life's systems. They come here to realize again and again that they are not responsible for the world. They come to recognize their part in the interdependent web of all existence. They come to gladly acknowledge that they cannot make it in this life alone. Men come to rest for a while in the faith that living needs all of us, not just some of us, not just the strong, not just the select, but all of us.

One of the most powerful things a man can do is humble himself amid a community of believers. To humble himself by turning his desire to succeed toward cooperation. To humble himself by acknowledging his gentleness. To humble himself by listening more than speaking, serving more than being served, feeling more than thinking. Anyone who has ever experienced personal power can tell you that a person's greatest strength comes through vulnerability. Through the ability to surrender comes the greatest opportunity for growth. Church is a place where a man need not prove himself in macho ways. It is a place where he can set down his worldly responsibilities, if only for an hour, and worship among equals. At its best, church will ask of a man the very things the secular world claims to have little time for. At its best, church will ask a man to team his heart with his hands to help in building community. In church, a man can listen to other people's children and interact with them. In church, a man can talk with other men and women across generational lines without needing to prove himself. In church a man can learn to love his neighbor and his God.

My family has long understood "churchmanship." (I will leave the sexist nature of this term alone for a moment, acknowledging that I have known many women who exhibited fine churchmanship.) By "churchmanship," my family has traditionally understood the way a man could serve his congregation and also remain open to its faith-forming influence. A churchman knows the inner workings of the church. His knowledge of the physical plant allows him to care for the building and serve the congregation's needs for hospitable space. A churchman can help the minister at anytime during the worship service-whether to step in for someone who failed to show up; escort a dangerous or inappropriate person out of the sanctuary; quickly supply a forgotten hymnal, candles, or offering plate; or step in to lead the service if the minister suddenly fell ill. A churchman can help the minister out of any embarrassing social situation by simply singing his or her praises. He keeps an eye out for visitors to see that their needs are met and that they feel at home. My great grandfather was a churchman. My grandfather was a churchman. My father was a churchman. And I was one, too, until I joined the ranks of the clergy. One of the greatest griefs of my life came when I gave up my lay status and my churchmanship. For to be a churchman was to love my religious institution and serve it well. It was a place of honor and service. It asked me to be responsive to my own feelings as well as the feelings of others. It asked me to submit to my larger faith tradition while caring for it on the local level. Churchmanship helped fill my spiritual needs as a man. I wish its blessings on any of you-men or women-its honor and its service will add much to your life. We are blessed in this church by a number of churchmen and churchwomen. But this role is especially important for our men.

I can think of nothing more healing for the world than a man in church. A man who will sing hymns and pray prayers. A man who will come to church with his family. A man who will come to be with his friends. A man who can acknowledge the pain of the world and not have to excuse it away. A man who can open his heart to feel a full range of emotions. A man who can rest for a while in grace and be free. If you are a man, nurture this healing in yourself. If you are a woman, help the men in your life nurture their faith. For by doing so, you change the world. You right wrongs. You participate in the act of creation.

Let me speak plainly to my fellow men. It is important that you are here. It is important to me personally. As your minister, I need you to take an active role in furthering your own spiritual life-however you define it. I need you to be a part of this good institution, working for its continued health. I need you to bring your ideas, hope, and dreams to our common endeavor. I need you to bring your smiles and your tears to the work we do together.

Our women need you to be here in church. They need to know that men are on their side in the continuing struggle against sexism. They need you to help them stand proudly as religious liberals in a religiously conservative area. Our women need you because you are their husbands, fathers, brother, uncles, and grandfathers. Our women need you because you are their friends.

Our children need you to be here in church. They need to know that men care for them. They need men to teach them and listen to them. They need to know there are men with whom they are safe. They need to see their fathers, brothers, grandfathers, and uncles engaged in the church they are engaged in. Our children need you to be role models as they grow in their faith and maturity. Our youth need you to be in church so that when they are in need, there are understanding men to turn to. Our youth need you here more than you may ever realize as they deal with the pressures of teen life. Dating, sex, alcohol and drugs, suicide, driving, sports, college, and jobs all raise difficult questions. Our teens need men in their lives.

Gay men and straight men need each other. Black men and white men need each other. Lesbians and Latinas, Asian women and black women, young and old-all need men in their lives. Churches need men just as much as men need churches. It is important that you are here. Be proud of your role here. Be grateful for the path that has brought you here. Believe in yourself. Work for justice. And believe in the power of love to change the world. We are all glad you are here.

So be it.

Amen.

Questions for men’s groups

FROM: MaleCall – Winter 2006 Issue

When was the first time you thought that someone saw you as a man ?

Who has been a model for you, about good manhood?

Part of being an American man means carrying certain burdens. What is the burden you would most like to lay down?

Life with Father - Edward Frost Sermon

one of the great sermons on sons and fathers . . . .

Life With Father

I have not forgotten -- nor will I forget until all memory fades -- the day, the moment, in which my father and I parted. We did not put an ocean between us, or a country. He did not disown me nor I him. We parted, as a cloud passed between our hearts, shadowing what we had been, shadowing what we would be henceforth.

In this time, I was barely fifteen years old. We had come recently to America from England. There, he and I had been pals, chums, co-conspirators in fictions and fantasies. For as long as I could remember, each Sunday, my father and I would set out together for tramps down village lanes, across meadows, through churches, churchyards, and burial grounds. We explored ruined castles, fought off Norman invaders, Vikings, Black Knights.

We rowed the rivers curling through the countryside, in and out of locks, scrambled up and down brambled banks, slipped reverently past fallen abbeys. In the woods, we eluded the archers of bad King John. Beneath old oaks, my father pointed out where, in the moonlight, elves and fairies held their meetings, fairs, and dances. Plain for anyone to see, who cared to see, was the highest toadstool where the Fairy Queen held court. And there, amidst the roots, undoubtedly the entrance to an entire elfin city beneath our feet.

In a break along the hedgerows, a cow draped over a gate, munching, would draw my father into conversation. He would ask her about the quality of grass, how’s the family, looks like rain. And there across the field might bounce a rabbit who, my father would say on, was Charlie. Charlie, he would say, was going home after work to his wife, Mabel, and the kids, Alice and George. I have never hunted or killed any creature deliberately. How could one harm Charlie on his way home to Mabel and the kids?

This was who we were before the cloud passed between. Wizard and trusting apprentice. Storyteller and credulous listener. Teacher and student (my father taught me how to read and write before I started school). With him I interned in woodworking. Dallied with cooking (he had been a short order cook on Cape Cod during a sojourn to America in his youth).

Lest it seem he neglected his fatherly duties in those days, I suffered an occasional sore backside for whatever broken law, for some boy-word slipping carelessly from my lips, for once snitching a couple of shillings being saved for the gas or light meters. After one such spanking, I happened to catch the tears in his eyes.

All this we brought to America and, for awhile, attempted to nurture it, though there were no hedgerows, ruined abbeys; no hairy Vikings, certainly, no sniveling Normans. And, perhaps most telling of a coming closure, there was hardly a trace, even in that New England, of fairies, elves, or anything extraordinary. We had come, it seemed, to a land of prosaic places. Each Sunday, as in former times, we set out on a quest to keep us as we were, to hold back my years.

Then, that Sunday morning, my father came out to where I shuffled in dread in the gravel drive. I didn’t know how much damage I was about to do, but I knew I was about to cast us away. He came to me, sandwiches for us, and a thermos in his bag, and asked if I was ready to go. "Gee, Dad," I said, "A couple of my friends are picking me up and we’re going to go over to the baseball game." "Oh. All right." he said. Good-bye, his face could not hide. He turned and walked away, the golden cord unraveling as he went. Somewhere on a distant hill, in the tower of an ancient parish church, a bell tolled.

We were not the same again, of course. We continued to grow apart in the years that followed until, at his death -- now years ago -- it seemed we were barely acquainted. My adolescence, it seemed, was beyond him. He watched, as if helpless, as I tried out various foolish and dangerous ways, to become what passed for manliness then.

As I continued in my education, pursued my own dreams and ambitions, I left his knowledge and his understanding far behind. He had left school in the sixth grade to help support his mother and sister after his father gave up and ran away. He taught himself and was often mistaken for an Oxford man. But my journey left him by the wayside -- as, so he felt, had life, and all hope and possibility; and there he rooted in anger, regret, and self-destruction.

He was a man who, had he had a fathering father, had he not been born into abject poverty, had it not been for this or that, for fate or happenstance -- had all that beside-the-point not been so, he would have been a man whom all the world knew by name. But the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons from generation unto generation. And, instead, he became like a trapped creature gnawing away at himself, desperate for freedom.

What did I expect from my father, I wonder? What was it I so desperately needed, after it was too late, after he could no longer give it? Robert Bly, that poet-guru of the men’s movement (whatever happened to the men’s movement?) Robert Bly said what boys and young men need from older men is blessing -- because too few are blessed by their fathers. Blessing is the bestowal of approval and encouragement. "Blessing," says Webster’s dictionary, "Is a thing conducive to happiness or welfare." And without the blessing of the father all else, it seems, fails to be conducive to happiness or welfare.

For some of us, it seems, without the father’s blessing, his approval and encouragement, nothing fully satisfies. Always there is the rising urge to take the small or large success and burst with it through memory’s door shouting, "Hey, Dad, guess what?" And if he is not home, or occupied with his failings, or deep in his despair, his hopeless anger, his envy of his children, where, then, shall we go for blessing? Sons, daughters -- longing hopelessly for the father’s blessing ……some seek in mis-matching marriages, some into furious and soul-killing jobs, others into the brief safety of aloneness.

Of course, parenting is an impossible undertaking -- fathering or mothering. The expectations, always changing on us, can never be fully met. But it seems to me that, in general, we judge our fathers to have fallen short more than we judge our mothers. Some explain that that’s because a mother’s love is unconditional and a father’s love is not. Maybe so. When I was a practicing marriage and family therapist, I spent hours, sometimes weeks and months, listening to accounts, real and imagined, of the sins and shortcomings of the fathers. Many times I would finally have to shift the focus and say something like, "Tell me about your mother."

What is it about fathers that has them brought so often and kept so late in the court of their children’s judgment? I’m not talking about the obvious failures, the drunks, abusers, and the runaways. I mean what we call the "ordinary Joe;" your father; my father. You. Me. What is it about the task of fathering so many fumble with and finally put aside?

Well, I have a theory about fathering. It needs work and, like any good theory, many will find good reason to find it implausible. But I propose that much of what makes fathering so difficult is that fathers are men. That’s not the whole of the theory. That’s the reality, the ground on which the theory is built. I’ll go on to propose that men -- most men, the vast majority of men -- focus the greater part of their attention, their mental and emotional energy, and their time and attention on achieving and maintaining what they have been led to believe it means to be a man.

From the beginning, it has been required of men that they be strong. Dependable. In charge. Be all that Rudyard Kipling in his poem "If" says one must grow to be to be a man. Man is a Viking. A Hannibal. A Caesar. A hero. Invincible. Man stands like the king of creatures in the veldt, unmoved by whatever threatens.

I mentioned Rudyard Kipling’s poem, "If." I believe it to be one of the most frightening poems in the English language.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

That’s only half the poem. Those are only half of the requirements for manliness. What do I find frightening about Kipling’s poem? Well, I remember one of my psychology professors, talking about all these "ifs" for becoming a man and saying, "Your work, ladies and gentlemen, is to be done among those who whisper to themselves, 'But what if I can’t?'"

Kipling’s man was the idealized Victorian model. He was epitomized by the British Officer, ramrod straight on his white horse, buttoned up to his beard in a wool uniform in the middle of the desert prepared to show those ragged beggars screaming before him how an Englishman dies. "Mad dogs and Englishmen," wrote Noel Coward, "go out in the noonday sun." If, by some chance, this quintessential male did not die out there buttoned up with his boots on, he went home to teach his children how to be just like him -- endeavoring not to get too close to them in the process. His children, like those ragged beggars out there, were in need of being civilized.

Obviously, most of our fathers and most of us have not come home fresh from gifting the world with civilization at the point of our ceremonial swords. But what all that really boils down to is -- Success. It is impressed upon the male -- which is what fathers are made of -- that, whether they live in the age of Hannibal or Hank, they must, above all, be successful. And they must be successful at everything from running companies, preaching sermons, playing basketball in the driveway, earning a living, staying alive, and obviously, above all, not failing. For some men, successfully cutting in line at the exit is about the only hope for self-esteem they’ll have today. I contend that that’s a lot to handle and that, for most fathers, it doesn’t leave much left over for blessing our children, for being a successful father, or for even being conscious of what that might mean.

I never met my father’s father. To the best of my recollection, my father never mentioned him. Certainly, there had been no blessing there, no approval, encouragement, nothing conducive to happiness or welfare. And so my father strove to succeed without blessing, and always success eluded him and with that, he failed to bless his son. And the sins of the fathers, visited upon the sons, from generation unto generation.

Well, a sad story -- mine, maybe yours. What’s hopeful about sermons is that there’s usually some hint of redemption at the end, otherwise why preach them. I recall a poem by David Ray. It’s called "Thanks, Robert Frost." I want to repeat it here, by way of the redemption of fathers.

Do you have hope for the future?
Someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.

Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was.

Something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time
it seems we could so easily have been, or ought...

The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear.
And I too, and my children, so I hope…
will recall as not too heavy the tug of those albatrosses
I sadly placed upon their tender necks.

Hope for the past, yes, old Frost,
your words provide that courage
and it brings strange peace that itself passes into past,
easier to bear because you said it, rather casually,
as snow went on falling in Vermont years ago.

That’s what redemption is. That’s a way of thinking about what redemption is: giving the past hope where the past itself held none. How do we redeem the past? Surely what was, was? No. What was always is, blessing the present or reliving its sin generation after generation. A book that has stayed with me many years is called "The Dead Father," written by Donald Barthelm. It is, essentially, one long metaphor in which the dead father has become enormous, a veritable giant of a corpse, who must be dragged about on a long, long journey by his children.

The only hope for breaking the cycle, for our children’s sake, is for us to redeem the past, which is to forgive it all, to bless it -- a thing conducive to happiness or welfare. For whatever else it may have been worth, I have made some beginning in doing that for myself with this sermon: saying, yes he did those things, did not do those things, and he suffered this at the feet of his father -- bless him, too -- and carried all he suffered into the present, as do we all.

And it is not too late for me, still, in frequent tears and much puzzlement, still putting it all together and finding it not too late, now even past fathering and into grandfatherly-age, it is not too late to bless my children, seek their blessing upon the self he and I and he before him had to be, was not able to be, perhaps, what we wished or, looking back, what we could so easily have been.

To those early into fathering and yet-to-become fathers, I say this:

· Nothing is required of you by the past.

· Never read Rudyard Kipling.

· Never wonder what it means to be a man.

· If you think your father was a good father, he probably was.

Above all, continually give your children your blessing, that is to say, your approval and your encouragement. This is a thing conducive to happiness and welfare. And it is what your children seek when they turn and look at you.

* * * * * *

Prayer for men .

Prayer for Men

Creator God, we pray for men; those whom you have created to share in the conception of life, and share in the responsibility of raising children.

We ask that you would help them be all that you have created them to be. Help them to see themselves as whole persons, so that they can help their partners and their children be themselves as well. Help them to be present to their families if they've been too long absent. Help them to speak out against injustice where they've been silent; help them to be understanding and supportive of the pro-choice decisions of their sisters, mothers, wives, and female friends.

But most of all God, give them the love and tenderness they need to be loving and faithful partners. May they welcome the opportunity to be supportive of the children they help bring into this world. Give them courage and strength to live according to your guidance and wisdom always.

Amen.