Tribute to an imperfect father

It will soon be two decades since he suddenly left us. I was just thirty-nine at the time, a minister, as he had been for nearly half a century. But, as it does to everyone, time had caught up with him. When it did, Dad reluctantly retired from the pastorate and he and Mom made Louisville, Kentucky their retirement home.  Not a bad choice, if you ask me. Although they lived across town from where I was serving as a senior minister, seldom a Sunday went by but what they showed up to hear me preach and to worship in our church. One Sunday, they surprised me, and I suspect the whole church, by requesting to join the church I served. I am at a loss for the words to express the joy I felt the day I became, no longer just the son of my parents, but their pastor as well.

So proud was I, in fact, I took a walk around our neighborhood that afternoon and thought about the many good fortunes that had come my way throughout my life. For one thing, I was fortunate to be born and raised by good parents; parents who gave me a happy childhood; sent my brothers and me to good schools; and, made sacrifices to tote us along with them in their many travels around the world. By the time I was eighteen, for example, I had been to Europe and the Middle East three times, Scandinavia, Russia, the Far East, including Hawaii at least twice. Not your average childhood. I was lucky and I knew that I was.

Furthermore, as a young adult, I had two healthy children of my own, as well as a nice, newly built home in southern Jefferson County. "What more could you want?" I asked myself.  "Your the envy of your peers," or so I imagined.  "You're serving one of the largest congregations in the city. You've published your first book already.  And, you're pulling down a salary that the ministers in your Dad's era could only ever dream of receiving."  It was an afternoon stroll filled with some gratitude, more self-talk and self-congratulations, and a whole lot of ego. It was the farthest thing from my mind that anything whatsoever could interrupt my somewhat fairytale world.  Yet, what awaited me at nightfall that very day would turn my world upside down.

In those days, virtually all Baptist congregations had what they called, "Sunday night church." It isn't so today. But, back then, Baptist went to church on Sunday night and this after going just a few hours before on Sunday morning. No one knew why they did, except that they always had. Dad had been invited to speak at a different congregation that evening. So, he brought the evening sermon there even as I gave the homily at my own. I don't recall the subject of my sermon, but I do recall that somewhere between points two and three, a church member came running into the sanctuary, shouting.

"Pastor! I just got off the church office phone. It was you Mother, calling from the church where your Dad is preaching tonight. Something has happened. She wants you to meet her at Baptist East. You should go now!"

That ended the worship service. We drove fast enough to the hospital that we actually arrived ahead of the ambulance.  Soon, however, we could hear the sirens and see the flashing lights.  I noticed that Dad was strapped to a gurney when they lifted him from the ambulance and hurriedly wheeled him into the Emergency Room. That's when I got my first look at his face. His customary smile was gone, replaced by what looked like half a frown. Something, and I knew what it was as I had seen it many times before, was causing one side of his face to droop and hang as if weighted by something.  That same side of his body was stiff, even rigid, as if life itself were leaving it. "Dad's had a stroke," I thought to myself. I had the frightening feeling this was not going to turn out well for him or for us.

My suspicions were right. He held on for ten days or so, but only because of life support. Once we finally gave the hospital permission to turn it off, a decision we came to only reluctantly, then the end came quickly.  We held a memorial service a few days later ironically at the very church Dad had just joined only hours before the nightmare began. The memorial service was packed. More than a thousand people. Some showed up from several states away.  Dad had many friends. His influence was more far-reaching than we realized.  None of us were prepared for his passing, much less for this showing of love and support. My younger brother sang a song; my older brother brought the eulogy; and, I gave the funeral sermon.

I once heard Barack Obama say, "A son is either trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes." For a long time after his death, I viewed my father's unexpected, and unwanted, passing a one big cosmic mistake.  I was angry at him for leaving, angry at God for either causing him to die, or allowing it. Either way, I wasn't happy about it.  I was so angry, in fact, that his death became the catalyst for the dissolving of some other unresolved issues I had avoid dealing with.  For example, I had been angry at the Baptists for their incessant bickering over what they were going to "say" about the Bible.  When the Baptist denomination was taken over by fundamentalist Christians, it broke my father's heart. He tried so hard to warn others that they were out to do this, but few of the "real" Baptists listened. So, I blamed the fundamentalists for my father's untimely death. And, as a consequence, I left the ministry altogether.  I changed careers and, basically, had to start my adult life all over.  My marriage hadn't been a priority in my life either. So, when he died, it unraveled as well.  I looked for someone to blame for this, too, but I knew I was likely the bigger failure in it.

Oh, and God? Yep, I was mad as hell at her too.  "Why would you take my father?  What kind of God are you, anyway?"  I had counseled others over the years to look to their faith for help in times of crisis.  In the middle of a crisis myself, I found little help in my faith.  Where does a minister turn when he/she has doubts? Fears? Anger? Feelings of guilt? Sadness?  To say the least, I was a mess. For many months following his passing, I was the proverbial basket-case when it came to my emotional and spiritual state.

For about two years to be exact. One of the many things I remember my Dad saying over and again was, "Son, there's much about life, about God, about yourself you'll never fully understand. And, along the way, you'll make a lot of mistakes. But, no matter what you do, learn to forgive yourself, always forgive others, and, don't forget to forgive God." That I've done. It wasn't easy, but more like a process, a kind of evolution.  Today, I am at peace.  I still miss my Dad and it doesn't take much for me to cry when I think about him.  But, I no longer regard his death as a mistake.  In fact, I regard few things as a mistake.  For all the seminal insight into the stages of grief that the late Elizabeth Kubler-Ross gave to us, perhaps her most profound statements was, "There are no mistakes in life; all events are blessings given to us to learn from."  Though I didn't know it at the time, in so many ways I've written about elsewhere, Dad's death was a portal by which I entered into life itself.  How could I be anything but grateful today?

So, on this Father's Day, I've been expressing many personal thanks for the many priceless things I learned from my Dad.

1.  For one thing, I learned to laugh from my father -- to laugh at life, to laugh with others, even to laugh at myself.  Dad had a joke for every occasion. Virtually any situation he was in, he had a story to go along with it.  People gravitated to him for the simple reason they instinctively knew his laughter was contagious. As his son, I had heard, just as my brother's had, all of his jokes dozens of times. He'd say, "Did I ever tell you about the time..." and we'd look at each other and say, "Only about a thousand times." And then, he'd go right on as if we had never heard the joke before.  And, we'd laugh as if we had never had.  Funny thing, I would give almost anything to hear him tell today just one of his old stories Ive heard a thousand times before.

2.  My Dad was not a perfect father.  He made mistakes.  One of them was that he was so busy with church work, he had little time for us. He suffered, too, from the proverbial "please disease." He wanted to be liked and loved and so would sacrifice just about anything, even time with his family, if he thought his reputation would be enhanced or some church folk would like him more.  Funny, isn't it, how these things tend to repeat themselves? Although I grew up recognizing these flaws in him, and resenting him for them, once I became an adult, a minister, and a father myself, I pretty much repeated the same pattern with my own family.  I now realize this is what the ancient writer meant when he spoke of the sins of the father's being "visited" upon the children and grandchildren.  Just as the children of alcoholics are often alcoholics themselves, the children of busy parents are often preoccupied with anything but what's really important. This perhaps also explains why I have found myself saying to my children the very things I remember Dad saying to me, "You'll make mistakes through life...lots of them. You'll have to learn to forgive yourself."

3. There’s another side to this, however. I acquired a strong work ethic from my father.  He believed in hard work and he worked hard.  He had little time for laziness. So, my brothers and I had to get jobs and actually earn our own spending money when we turned twelve.  At the time, I didn't realize part of this was driven by the fact that my parents didn’t have much spare change.  So, we went to work. I had my first paper route at age twelve. My older brother and I were up at five every morning delivering the Lexington Herald-Leader.  Frequently, Dad would go with us but he always did whenever we had inclement weather.  We complained about having to get out in the weather. He never complained. He'd just remind us that life is work and we had a job to do and people that counted on us to do it.

And, oh, this was that time I first learned about giving back, too.  Dad believed in being grateful and generous and demonstrating both by giving away a portion of your earnings, right off the top, too. Not the left-overs.  I think I earned about twenty dollars that first month.  In those days, we had to visit every house and collect the dues for delivering the paper.  As I was celebrating my windfall, Dad said, “Well, son, you’ve made pretty good money your first month.  Now, by my calculation, a tithe of twenty dollars would be two dollars.  So, here’s an offering envelope from church. That two dollars is God's portion. Put it in the envelope and drop it in the plate on Sunday morning."

Had I known Saint Paul's words, "God loves a cheerful giver," I would have revolted.  I was anything but happy or cheerful about having to give away two dollars.  Funny how these things go, isn’t it?  Here it is some forty years later and, every paycheck, I find myself calculating a tithe.  And, then some.

4. Finally, I learned the importance of a spiritual life from Dad.  He was a very devout man.  And, he wanted his sons to grow up being devout, too. But, Dad was wise enough to know what many religious parents do not.  You can’t tell a child what to believe and think that’s transferring the faith.  Dad must have known instinctively what Deepak Chopra expressed in words: “Beliefs are a mere cover-up for insecurity. You only believe in the things you’re not certain about.”  Dad knew he could stand on Sunday morning and preach but he never preach to us and expect us to just believe. He knew that, until forged in the crucible of our own experience, he could do little more than live in front of us the spiritual values that were important to him.  And, in the end, it worked, just as it does for almost any parent who knows his or her task is to guide and to model and then leave the results to God.

My Dad taught me to think for myself. As a consequence, I am a deeply devout person today because I choose to be so, not because I’ve been cloned into being devout.  My father’s God was big enough, and skilled enough, to find me, without feeling like God needed his help. Instead, my Dad attempted to live his faith and so model for my brothers and me what it means to take serious the teachings of Jesus.  Rather than giving lip service—a characteristic quite common to churchgoers these days—to such words like, “Love your enemies,” my Dad, were he alive today, would be calling for an end to all religious wars.  He would be embracing our Islamic brothers and sisters, as well as summoning equality for Palestinians.  In an age of religious dogmatism and thoughtless fundamentalism, whether in Christianity, Islam, or any other religion, it is my sincerest wish on this Father’s Day, that every child in this world be the grateful beneficiary, as I have been, to be the son of a father who, though not perfect man, was worthy and is worthy to be remembered and so honored this special day.