June 21st, 2009
By Bob Rockford

This is a poem written by Dick Lourie and it's also spoken by the character Thomas Builds a Fire at the end of the movie "Smoke Signals."

How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.
Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?

And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?

Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?

If we forgive our Fathers what is left?

I was born in January of 1949.  My dad had been discharged from the Navy a couple of years before my coming.  He had lived in Paterson New Jersey and left to join the Navy before he turned eighteen.  Around 1944 he met my mom at a Tennessee amusement park while he was stationed in Memphis.  The way the family story is told, my grandfather saw my dad, walked up to him and said, "Come on sailor, I've got a ticket for you."  After a long distance courtship my mom and dad married in 1945. 

My dad bought me my first car when I was three years old.  The Navy had called him back when the Korean War started.  He was a Navy photographer stationed in San Diego.  One day he was in town, walking by a car dealership and in their window was a pedal car for a kid.  He came back the next week and paid the salesman $150.00 to buy the car and have it shipped back to St. Louis.  When he was discharged a couple of months later he came back to St. Louis, put a gasoline motor, out of a washing machine, in the back and that was my first car.  

My dad bought a boat in 1958, when I was in fourth grade.  Every weekend after that we were on the Mississippi River; he taught my brother and I how to read the river, how to water-ski, and to fly the kite that we pulled behind the boat.  When I was old enough to drive he taught me how to pull the boat, back the boat trailer into the water and off load the boat.  Then at the end of the day to back the trailer into the water and load the boat back on it.  

My dad also taught me how to fly.  He had gotten his civilian pilot's license while he was in the Navy.  After he was discharged from the Navy he let the pilot license expire.  When I turned 16 he got re-certified as a private pilot and that's when I had my first plane ride.  He took me up in a Piper Cub on a cold and damp overcast day in late fall.  All we did was touch and go landings around the airport because the clouds were low.  On one of those trips around the airport the side door of the Piper Cup popped open.  My short life flashed before my eyes.  My dad laughed, reached out and closed the door.

In 1969 I was 20 years old and could do anything I wanted.  So I enlisted in the Marine Corp.   I never told my parents that I was going to enlist until I had signed the papers.  Three months later I boarded a TWA flight in St. Louis, heading to Marine Corp Recruit Depot, San Diego California for boot camp.  Two years later I ended my required active duty and went home.  One day after that I got angry with my dad, hit him in the mouth and left home.

Years later I came to the realization that, like him, I am not perfect.  The image of the man who could save me from the monsters under my bed became the image of the man who was flawed.  There was a specific point in time when I realized that he was not the all-powerful super dad I had thought he was.  Then later I came to the same realization, I wasn't either.  We were both a couple of flawed men who had become fathers based on some decisions we had made during our life.  And as hard as we tried there were times we screwed up and made mistakes.  My dad and I come from a long line of screw-ups.  

I am a dad and a grandfather, or papaw to my grandson.  I look over that time of being a dad and see my mistakes but I also see the successes, things that hopefully have made a difference in the life of my daughter.  All my life I have been a son and there is no mistaking that a part of who I am is linked to my dad.  Five years ago I called him when I was in one of the Landmark courses and told him that, "All I have inside of me that I don't like I put there, and all the good stuff I have inside has come from you."  There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and then he started talking about this bucket we are all born with that we put stuff in, and sometimes we need to get rid of some of those things in the bucket so we can put new things in the bucket.  He talked for 20 minutes about this bucket and finally said, "Bob, I couldn't be more proud of you."  I try and call my parents every week.  They're both older now but they have been fortunate to have lived to see their grandchildren and a new great-grandson; the family's continuation.  

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"  (Mark 4:35-41 NRSV)

Jesus said to his disciples, "Let us go across to the other side."  Jesus always looked toward the horizon; he was restless in his ministry.  Jesus was not one to build "an established church," or have "a settled ministry."  He was the one who was given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and read it to the assembled,

God's spirit is on me; He's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind.  To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, "This is God's year to act!"

 (Luke 4:17-21 The Message)

For the disciples, crossing the Sea of Galilee to the other side would be like us crossing the Pacific Ocean to the other side; it was dangerous.  The Sea of Galilee is well known for its storms.  They come out of nowhere with unexpected swiftness, shattering the calm of the water.  Anyone who traveled the lake would know that there was a possibility of being caught in sudden storms.  

While Jesus slept in the stern of the boat one of those storms came up and caught the disciples by surprise.  They had no warning and before they could prepare for the worst, this questionable boat they were in was being hit by ten-foot swells.  They began taking on water and were in danger of sinking.  The disciples were scared but finally got the bright idea to wake up Jesus.  Screaming in desperation they said, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"  I think it may have been more like, Hey; you're the Son of God.  Do something!  Jesus did do something, he stood and said, Peace, be still, settle down, quiet.  The wind died and there was a calm that came over the water. The Message version of the Bible says it best, "The wind ran out of breath."  The wind stopped, the lake became like glass and after what they had just been through it was jarringly still.  For thirty minutes the disciples didn't move, until one of them leaned to the others and said, Don't make him mad.  

Isaiah 9:6 says, "For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."  The child's name will be, "Mighty God."  In Hebrews 1:3 the author says, "He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word."  Jesus is the, "exact imprint of God's very being."  In John 14:8-10, Philip wants to see the Father.  Jesus says to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father."  Jesus is his Father's Son!  He is a model for what it looks like to be a child of God.  Are we not all daughters and sons of God?  Are we not all made in the image of God?  Jesus shows us how to be what we were made to be.  And on Father's Day, 2009, he is a model for us. He shows us what it takes to be a father.

The boys wake Jesus from a sound sleep, there are monsters under the boat, they believed the storm was caused by a demon.  Jesus came and chased the demons away and the boys were in awe of this man.

Then Jesus asked, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"  These are the questions that Jesus asked his first disciples and they are the questions Jesus asks us today. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and start obsessing about something that I need to take care of, something that, at that time, seems all encompassing.  I can't sleep; the monsters are under my bed and they are in control.  At times I can't shake the fear, but at other times I hear the words of Jesus in the middle of storm on the lake, "Peace! Be still!"  Then I can rest in the arms of the Father and sleep.

I don't remember specific times as a boy when my dad came and chased away the monsters, but I'm certain he did.  I remember the things I learned from my dad.  I also remember the times of anger, the times of separation, and the times of silence.  I still call him sometimes when I'm wrestling with a problem.  He listens and passes on some of his wisdom.  And every once in a while I listen to him and I get to pass on some of my wisdom to my dad.      

The end of the poem in "Smoke Signals" asks this.

Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?                                                                                        If we forgive our Fathers what is left?

            What's left?  Maybe the words spoken by Barack Obama this past Friday as he talked with teenagers, young men, community mentors and everyday dads on responsible fatherhood, begin to answer that question.  "I've been far from perfect. But in the end it's not about being perfect. It's not always about succeeding. It's about always trying. And that's something everybody can do. It's about showing up and sticking with it."

Benediction

In a 1988 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Robin Williams said this about fathers: It is a wonderful feeling when your father becomes not a god but a man to you—when he comes down from the mountain and you see he's this man with weakness.  And you love him as this whole being, not as a figurehead.

Gentlemen, Happy Fathers.