Chalice Lighting
We light this chalice to honor our fathers.
Those men who saw us through skinned knees and broken hearts.
Who dried our tears and told us it was ok to cry.
Who taught us the value of hard work and the need for a Sunday afternoon nap.
Who took us to see James Bond knowing mom would have a fit when she found out.
Who taught us to drive and with fear in their hearts, handed us the car keys.
Who was always good for a $20 between paydays.
Who let us go when they really wanted us to stay.
We light this chalice to honor our fathers. Even if they were not the men responsible for our birth.
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You're not my FATHER! You can't tell ME what to do!
Jac Grimes
I want to ask all the men to help me in an exercise. If you are a birth father, stand up. If you are a step father, adoptive father, live in boyfriend or grandfather in a primary father’s role, stand up. If you are an uncle, grandfather, mentor, youth advisor, coach, teacher, or scout leader, stand up. Now for everyone else, if you have had in your life a man that has served in one of these roles, stand up. Fathers are important. You may be seated.
Please take a moment and share with us the names of important father figures and male role models in your life. Thank you.
I want to begin with a story written by Loren Eisley
One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.
Approaching the boy, he asked, What are you doing?
The youth replied, Throwing starfish back into the ocean.
The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.
The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.
Son, the man said, don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!
After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said I made a difference for that one.
Mark Twain is quoted as saying:
"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
Truer words were never spoken. Fathering is tough work. While we all want to be Ward Cleaver or Ozzie Davis more times than not we come off like Homer Simpson or Ozzie Osborne. It’s tough enough when you’re dealing with a birth child but if you are the father figure without a blood connection it is tough to the nth degree.
I want to make sure that no one misunderstands my intent. I’m not here to bash birthfathers. I’m one myself. And I do understand that in our modern world there are many circumstances that prevent a loving father from being with his kids. I just want to make sure that the men who do the work of father without being the birthfather are honored and celebrated. I’m talking about foster fathers, adoptive fathers, stepfathers, uncles, mentors, grandfathers in a primary father role and anyone that takes on the role of father where a birthfather is absent.
The title of this sermon You're not my FATHER! You can't tell ME what to do! says a great deal about the relationship between non birth children and the father of the house. As an adoptive and foster father, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard that phrase. It comes out usually at the end of a heated and sometimes loud discussion around house rules, chores, etc. But to understand the full relationship you have to know that the father’s unspoken response is “You’re not my kid. What in the Hell are you thinking?”
I know you birth fathers, especially those with teenagers, are saying to yourselves, “I ask that question all the time.” The “What the Hell were you thinking?” question can be found on page 4935 of the Fathering manual you brought home from the hospital. What? You didn’t get one? Sure you did. It was with all that other “baby stuff” that came home. You know the stuff you ignored and your spouse eventually threw out?
Anyway this brings up an important distinction between being a birth father and not. When dealing with your birth kids, you are in fact swimming in the same gene pool. Sometimes it feels like barely treading water but underneath it all, you KNOW this kid. Just like people say she has your eyes or he has his mother’s hair, he also has your ADD and his mother’s stubborn streak. My mother always told me when I was dating to pay close attention to the girl’s mother. 39 years of wedded bliss later I understand those words.
When Jason pulls some bonehead stunt or even accomplishes some great task I can usually relate it to someone in the family. Not only can I see my ADD and tendency towards perfection in him, I can also see Liz’s loving nature and compassion. I also see traces of Liz’s dad and brother and my dad, mom and grandfather in him. That doesn’t mean he is destined to commit the same mistakes we have. He is very much his own person. I’m just saying that his actions often make sense at a fundamental level. Not so with children you are responsible to parent but did not sire.
It’s also safe to assume that if you don’t understand their actions and the causes behind them, they don’t get you either. This is especially true of foster children. Most foster children we’ve had did not have a strong male influence in their lives prior to coming into our home. Male/female relations in the birth home may have been violent or abusive, or even nonexistent. Rules that make sense to us, in our middle class home, may seem arbitrary to them. The use of natural and logical consequences in dealing with their behavior may seem punitive. Many of them have never had to take any responsibility for what they do.
Thich Nhat Hanh in his book “Being Peace” tells the story of a Thai River Pirate that raped a 12 year old girl. As a result of this she threw herself overboard and drowned. Nhat Hanh goes on to say that in the face of such abhorrent behavior it is natural to take the side of the young girl and simply shoot the pirate. If we do that, we ignore the conditions that caused the man to become a pirate in the first place. Not to excuse his behavior but to change conditions so others do not follow his example.
Now I’m not saying that non birth children are like river pirates, although some certainly are, it is important when fathering them to understand as much as possible about the conditions of their life prior to you entering it. For foster and adoptive children their past almost always includes abuse and neglect. Many times this includes sexual abuse at the hands of a male family member. As I said before most children in care have never had a positive male role model in their lives and were often raised by single mothers. Sometimes they don’t know how to interact with a father because they’ve never had one.
It’s unfortunate that they tend to take all their anger and frustration out on the mother of the house. It’s one of those things that defy logic. Their father abandons them and they take it out on their mom and any other woman who steps into that role.
Even step fathers and live in boyfriends need to have a clear understanding around what happened in the prior relationship. This is especially true around any issues of violence and what if any role the birth father will play in the children’s lives going forward.
In researching this sermon I’ve read countless articles that say a father figure is important in a child’s life and a couple that say a father is irrelevant. I think we tend to take from these studies what we want but my experience tells me that a father figure in the home can have a positive effect on a child’s life. I’m not alone.
In her article, The Impact of Father Absence, Dr. Nina Chen writes:
“Research findings consistently reveal that warm and affectionate fathers not only can help their children develop positive self-esteem, but also influence the development of their children’s gender role behavior. Fathers are significant for both boys and girls. For instance, boys can learn from their fathers about growing up as a male, male interests, activities, and social behavior. Girls can learn from their fathers to develop a trusting comfortable relationship with men. Loving fathers also have a positive influence on achievement in boys and personal adjustment in girls. Loving fathers who provide limit setting, moral reasoning, and reasonable and firm guidance without imposing their will can help promote their children’s competence. Research on father-child involvement also shows that fathers are significant for children, sensitive to children and fathers’ play with children is different from mothers’. Obviously, fathers are just as important to their children as mothers.”
Even if that’s true, I’ve had a nightstand thrown through a bedroom window, large rocks thrown through the screening on my back porch at my dogs, and a newborn infant that cried 23 hours a day for 2 weeks. I’ve experienced projectile vomiting at a public restaurant, 3 times by 2 different kids, almost had my house set on fire and had more than one child leave my home in handcuffs in the back of a police car. With over 55 foster children in 31 years, there’s not much I haven’t seen.
I do occasionally run into a former foster child we’ve had and sometimes they will tell me that in retrospect their time in our home was valuable. Some even still call me dad. In fact I ran into one of our former foster kids at a high school where I was driving for a sports team. We’ll call him Jaylen. (Not his real name.)
Jaylen’s behavior caused us to cut a vacation to the Maryland shore short by two days. We had to enlist the help of a Police Officer to get him back in the car when we made a bathroom stop on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. For the whole ride home he kicked, screamed and cursed us. He repeatedly told us we hated him because he was black and when we did get to Greensboro, he went straight to a social worker and did not return to our home.
He told me a few years later at the high school that he realized he was wrong and that in his journey through foster care we had treated him better than any home he had lived in, black or white. He told me he was living in a group home and had plans for college.
In 1980 with a new baby in the house, a 5 year old girl and her 3 year old brother showed up with just the clothes on their backs. 6 months later they were back with their mother and within a year after that were back in care. They were not placed with us because their birth mom knew where we lived. They returned to live with us 8 years later and we adopted Julie while her brother Brandon went back to live with his birth mother. Today Julie has 2 great boys, a loving husband and is an AP US History teacher at NW Guilford HS.
We had a foster child that when we asked if we could move her with us from Gastonia to Jamestown we were told we could go ahead and adopt her. Sometimes things work out.
There are in the United States almost a half million children in foster care as of the latest available statistics. 423,773 (2009). With almost half (49%) of those children, the goal is reunification with the birth family and most kids are in foster care less than a year. (again 49%) Close to 12,000 of those children are in North Carolina. Recent changes in NC law restrict foster homes to 2 children at a time.
So if this work is so tough, the potential is to only impact a handful of kids, and a lot of hard work has to be done in a short time just to send them back to the situation from which they left, why do it?
Because I’m a Unitarian Universalist, that’s why. To me fatherhood is a sacred trust. Our first principle tells us every person has worth and deserves dignity. Our seventh principle tells us that all things are connected.
Being a father to kids that I did not sire is an expression of my faith as a UU. Just like the boy in The Starfish Story, I can’t save them all but I can make a difference in the ones that cross my door. I can affect the lives of the children that sleep under my roof, no matter how short a period of time that is. Liz, Jason and I can teach, through example mostly, that people do not have to live in neglectful and abusive situations. I can show that it’s ok for a man to be caring and compassionate. I can model that women deserve respect and can show the boys that come through our home what a healthy male/female relationship looks like. I can bring them to this church where they learn from all of you. I can make a difference.
In the words of Unitarian Minister Edward Everett Hale
“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”
This is something I can do. Happy Father’s Day.
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Benediction
A Father's Day Prayer
By Kirk D. Loadman-Copeland
Let us praise those fathers who have striven to balance the demands of work, marriage, and children with an honest awareness of both joy and sacrifice. Let us praise those fathers who, lacking a good model for a father, have worked to become a good father.
Let us praise those fathers who by their own account were not always there for their children, but who continue to offer those children, now grown, their love and support.
Let us pray for those fathers who have been wounded by the neglect and hostility of their children.
Let us praise those fathers who, despite divorce, have remained in their children's lives.
Let us praise those fathers whose children are adopted, and whose love and support has offered healing.
Let us praise those fathers who, as stepfathers, freely choose the obligation of fatherhood and earned their stepchildren's love and respect.
Let us praise those fathers who have lost a child to death, and continue to hold the child in their heart.
Let us praise those men who have no children, but cherish the next generation as if they were their own.
Let us praise those men who have "fathered" us in their role as mentors and guides.
Let us praise those men who are about to become fathers; may they openly delight in their children.
And let us praise those fathers who have died, but live on in our memory and whose love continues to nurture us.
AMEN and Blessed Be
