Fatherly Love

Today is my dad's birthday. And although I am writing this today, because I'm still on holiday and I don't have regular internet access at the moment I'm not certain if I'll be able to post this online in time for his birthday, I still thought it was something I not only wanted to share with my father but I also wanted to write about in general, and I also thought it was worth sharing with everyone.

This past year I decided I would greatly benefit from counselling. If you have read any of the entries from my previous blog you will know that last year I went through a bit of a large scale transition in life. Transitions are hard at the best of times, and the greater they are the more they possess the potential to be largely unsettling. In unsettling times it is incredibly beneficial to have someone neutral to hold your hand through it all, and to help you see important things about yourself when it's easy to forget to look. One very interesting point about unsettled times in life is that it is during these times that we are most readily willing to acknowledge just how broken we have become, and we are often more willing to work on that brokenness with a greater enthusiasm than at times in our life where we feel the most settled and content. Being settled and content are great things in life, but they do carry with them a kind of inertia, almost to the level of complacency, during which we just aren't that worried about our short-comings, we aren't that determined to 'work on ourselves' or to push ourselves towards becoming better, more-caring people.

Who we are is so incredibly a product of our early years of life. Our concepts of relationships, and our ability to feel secure when dealing with other people, when sharing our emotions intimately with them, these are things we learn from the first relationships we developed in our lives, primarily the relationships we experience in our families. Because our early life has such an incredible impact on who we become, who we are, and how we deal with the world around us, naturally when going through my counselling a major part of our sessions were spent looking at how these early relationships in my life formed and developed and grew throughout my life.

Every family has their interesting dynamics. I like the dynamics of my family, for the most part. But none-the-less I know there is no such thing as a perfect family. I remember once when the 'Gypsy' fair came to town my mom saw a little painted kitchen decoration which read “A great talker and a strong silent type live here” or something along those lines. That sign definitely sums up the dynamics of my parents. My mother can talk non-stop. Seriously. I remember when I was at high school and I would want to sleep in on Saturday mornings, but every Saturday, as I lay in my bed trying to sleep in my mom would be on the phone talking and laughing so loudly any hope for an extended sleep was ruined. I haven't lived at home now for about 12 years or something close to that, and although I love my parents very much, I never really visited them all that much, and when I did I found it hard to stick around at home for more than one week at a time. A friend of mine recently told me his realisation about parents, and that is that no matter how old you get your parents will never stop parenting. My parents are now half a world away, so visiting them isn't possible these days anyway. But when they were in the same country as me, despite not visiting very often I would still call my parents regularly, and my mother, being the great talker that she is, was the one who I would spend the most time talking with when I called. You see, I have inherited from my parents an interesting blend of the qualities of the great talker and the strong silent type. I can talk non-stop when given the opportunity, but I also possess my fathers tendency for quiet gravity, preoccupation and deep thought.

By the way, deep thought does not refer necessarily to thinking about deep subjects, but at the very least thinking about shallow subjects deeply. For example, one day I was on Queens Street thinking deeply about a very important question. That question was whether or not I should top-up my pre-pay mobile phone. I must have looked very deep in thought indeed for a woman approached me and said “You look like you are very deep in thought!”

During this past year I had a very interesting realisation about my father, and our relationship, especially in the first 15 years of my life. But first I want to talk about the last 15 years of our relationship. My counselling sessions this past year made me think regularly about things like this. When I first started thinking about my relationship with my father for some reason my mind was always stuck on the last 15 years of our relationship together. 15 years ago I was about to turn 15, and the family was just about to move from Canada to New Zealand. My father had applied for a job at a pulp and paper mill in New Zealand, not because he needed a job, but because my family has some kind of leaning towards trying new things out, being a little bit adventurous. A little bit anyway. Being a teenager is a turbulent thing to be. Erikson, who devised a theory of human development focused on the domain of psycho-social development, put forward the idea that during one's adolescent years one is faced with the conflict of identity versus role confusion. During this time the teenager begins to test concepts of identity, and tries to gain a deeper understanding of their role and place in this world. It is an interesting paradox of human relations that older males have a greater sense of resistance to change on a social level. My brother and I would dye our hair vibrant colours, and we started getting body piercings. Within a week of my 18^th birthday I even got my first tattoo.

When I got my tattoo I didn't tell my dad. I told my mom. She already had a tattoo herself, recently inked into her skin. My father wasn't big on the idea. My mom broke the news to him while I was on a weekend trip getting the tattoo done in a town about an hour away from where we lived at the time. The primary reason my father didn't like the idea of his son having a tattoo was that he was worried that other people would judge his parenting if his kids had tattoos and piercings. My mom's argument in response was that we were actually good kids, my parents both knew that well, and so it shouldn't matter what others think. To put this into context, my first tattoo was a combination straightedge (drug free) Christian tattoo. My brother and I were experimenting with identity concepts for sure, but we were still good, moral kids.

My father loved his job a lot. Well, I don't know if it was love he felt for his job, but I know that his job gave him a sense of meaning, and he liked problem solving, he liked project management, and being absorbed in these things seemed to energize him. We lived about half an hour, or 45 minutes away from his work, so he would leave early in the morning and then drive home later in the evening. Sometimes, during projects, he would work 70 hour weeks I think. With me going through my teenage years, and my dad working long hours our relationship changed from previous dynamics. And when this was combined with the fact that we had recently moved into a country with a lot of traditions, sports and other social norms that we just didn't really understand as foreigners (I'm talking things like cricket or rugby, a heaving drinking culture and 21^st birthday parties with yard-glasses) things just turned out that we didn't have that much to do together.

When I moved out of home, because my visits were always sparse, and my primary medium of communication was telephone, my relationship with my father went through a new dynamic. We would talk sometimes on the phone, but my dad isn't much of a phone kind of guy. But my mother and I could talk a lot, both having the gift of the gab. As a result, when I began to think about my relationship with my parents my mental picture was a relationship which was somewhat uneven, that my mother had a greater role in my life than my father did. And often when describing my family dynamics my counsellor would point out that my father was often a silent figure in my descriptions. But then, one day, I had a rather big epiphany about my relationship with my father.

One day I was thinking about a story my mother often tells about the day I punched the glass window of the front door in our little house during the middle of winter and broke it. My mom says that she heard the glass break and came running and saw me standing there looking shocked. I don't know exactly what age I was, but I was under five years old I'm certain, and I was in the front yard riding my little sled down a little pile of snow. I was having the time of my life walking up the hill, sliding down, and walking back up to slide down again. But I was feeling a little bit lonely, I didn't have anyone to share this excitement with. My younger brother was still too young to take part in these kinds of games and I don't think any of the neighbours had young kids my age. So I wanted to call my mom out to the front yard to watch me slide. At that time, however, my mother was using her gift of talking and was on the phone with a friend. After calling out to her a number of times to come and watch I got frustrated and in my frustration I punched the glass window of the front door, shattering it.

As I thought about this story, I started thinking about some of the other stories that come to mind about my young childhood. As I thought about them I realised that a great number of them contained the same element of my mom talking and talking and talking on the phone. Now, I'm in no way suggesting that my mother was in any way neglectful. But this did start to make me question the concept I had of my relationship with my parents, and primarily the concept that my mother was the more active part of that relationship. For some reason, when I used to think about my relationship with my father during those first fifteen years I would always have memories of being angry that my dad had to work on the 1^st of July, which was Canada day. I don't know why this was a big deal. My dad always took a long holiday in the summer, and we would spend a lot of time together, but none-the-less this used to stick out in my mind about those years. But when I started to think about the issue more, I started having this incredible rush of memories. When I realised that my concept of my relationship with my parents during my first fifteen years of life didn't actually match the reality I started to realise something very sad. I realised that I had practically ignored the amazing things my dad used to do for us, and with us, when I was younger.

The first memory that hit me was of my dad during some of my younger birthday parties. My dad had a bunch of games that he would have us play together, and he loved having the opportunity of organising and supervising these games. Then I remembered the fact that all through my involvement with the various levels of boy scouts my dad was right there the whole time. My dad became a leader of beavers scouts, of cub scouts, and I'm pretty sure he was a boy scout leader for the short time I was a boy scout. I remember one day during cub scouts a boy who was a very mean hearted boy tripped me up on purpose, and I landed very hard on my tail-bone. I was crying and my father, being a leader, was right there to comfort me. Every year we would have a big feast with all the scouts to celebrate the birthday of Baden Powell, the founder of scouts, and we would perform a variety of skits in front of all the parents. My dad would often be one of the main organisers of the skits. I definitely remember that these feasts were always at the Ukrainian hall, and always featured Ukrainian catering, with foods like perogi and cabbage rolls.

I started to remember that my dad would always take on the sacrifice of being involved in whatever we got involved in as boys. My dad became the couch of our tee-ball team, and then he coached our soft-ball team. I loved having my dad as the coach. After a few years of playing I found that I excelled at the position of back-catcher. Back-catcher is probably the tuffest position to play in baseball. There is a rule in baseball that if a runner is running from third base to home, the back-catcher, if he has the ball, can tag him out. However, if the runner manages to hit the back-catcher so hard that the back-catcher drops the ball, then the runner is not out, and his making it home safely counts as a run. That means that, as the back-catcher, you have to expect to get a few knocks in the game, something that isn't expected with any of the other positions in baseball. At home some evenings, like every good father in North America, my dad and I would play catch in the backyard, especially if I had gotten a new baseball glove.

My dad would play softball with a league that ran through the mill he worked at. It was a family affair, in the sense that many of the players would bring their families along, and we would often meet together after games for family barbecues, chips, beer and other fizzy drinks. I remember one game when I was very young, I was running around without shoes on, and I stepped on a squashed Coke can. The can was squashed so much that it had broken, leaving jagged edges of tin to rip through my heel. The can bent and got stuck on my heel, digging deeper. I still have a scar from that day. I don't know if my mother was at that game or not, but for some reason I remember my dad taking me home to bandage up my heel. I remember a similar day when it was just me and my dad, and somehow while I was playing with some of the other young kids I got a really big wood splinter in my foot. I remember my dad taking me home early to try and get it out. Eventually I was old enough to play on my fathers softball team along with him. Boy could my dad throw a baseball. I remember him often playing left field, the most important position in the outfield.

I remember when I got into karate, after I had made my way up to receive my blue or brown belt my dad also decided to join the same karate group I was part of. By that time I was attending the adult karate classes, and because I had a brown belt I had to do a little bit of teaching of some of the newer members of the karate class. My dad didn't stick to karate for long, but he did give it a go. My dad has a bad habit I have also inherited from him. That habit is of getting treats from petrol stations. Whenever I go to pay for petrol I feel the need to buy some vegan chocolate or some chips, or something, though due to financial poverty I often have to suppress that urge. I remember the routine we had when I was a kid of going to 7-11 after karate each week, my brother would join my dad for the car ride sometimes just to get some nachos and cheese, and I would often opt for either Doritos or a chocolate bar, or if I was lucky, both.

My dad bought me and my brother a set of cross-country skis for Christmas one year. There was a large area of bush near our house full of paths and walkways, which in winter made perfect places for cross-country ski adventures. I used to love that bush, and over the years of living in that town I think I learned my way through the whole labyrinth of paths. I remember cross-country ski adventures through those paths where we would end up completely lost, but still made it home safe every time.

I remember one year, when my dad was one of the leaders of the church youth group, before I was old enough to be part of the youth of the church, the youth group was going on a downhill ski trip to Fernie, British Columbia. My dad brought me along for the trip, even though I wasn't a member of the youth group. It was a long bus ride to BC. I sat with my dad the whole way. We stopped off at a waffle house, or a pancake house, I can't remember which but I know I ate Belgium waffles and they were amazing. One night while I was sleeping on the bus a car with a suspected drunk driver ran into the back of the bus. We must have been stopped for a while before I actually woke up. My dad told me what happened, so I went outside to see. I saw the car all smashed up, with the driver, still conscious , but covered in blood, talking to the police and other emergency workers. I learned how to ski on that trip, and even went down the hardest hill, the double black diamond run called “China Wall” or something like that. On the ride home my dad bought me a toy from Toys'r'us. It was a little helicopter type toy, that would actually fly. Unfortunately, about an hour after we arrived home I lost it in the ceiling of the kitchen after it took an untimely and incredibly high flight in our uniquely designed living room.

After learning to ski my brother and I started to ski all the time. Sometimes we would even make it to the ski hill four times in one week. During Christmas holidays we would try and ski every single day if possible. Although my dad wasn't the greatest skier he would still drive us out to the ski hill, and spend the day either sitting in his car or in the ski chalet reading a newspaper or doing some paper work for work. In one sense it was amazing that he was willing to sacrifice his days like that just so we could go skiing for a few hours.

When I remembered all of these things I was incredibly sad and surprised that I had ever forgotten how much my father gave to us while we were growing up. My dad played such an incredibly active role in my childhood, putting so much energy and time into us, ensuring that we were socially active in a wide variety of ways, and also keeping us physically active. He helped to build in us a strong sense of confidence that we could do a lot of things. In my adult-life I know that I like to keep very busy, that I like being active, and I really like getting treats of chocolate from petrol stations whenever I can. I like problem solving, I like project management, and I like the concept of being a great father one day. The more I think about it, the more I realise that these are things I've learned from the amazing fathering that my own dad gave to me.

After I had this realisation I had a much deeper feeling of my fathers love for me, and my love for him. Although I think it is awful to forget the love that has been given it is an amazing experience to discover or remember the love that has always been there, but has just been forgotten.

Change is the mechanism that allows for growth

I woke up this morning and although the weather sucked, and I felt incredibly unmotivated to do much as a result, I felt an urge to start writing again. It's kinda been ironic in one sense that since I wrote a final entry for my Blind Heart blog I've had an issue on my mind that I wanted to write about. So I guess that's a good sign that it's time to move and and start up my new blog and see what happens. But instead of starting to write this morning I braved the ridiculous humidity to head out on my bike to hunt out some cheap bike parts I need to complete my tandem bike project. This summer I hope to have a tandem bike up and running for fun times at the beach, and a possible income source renting out the machine for $10-$15 per half-hour or something like that.

I was talking a with a friend of mine this morning on Facebook chat, who started the conversation with a phrase I've heard from a few people over the past few months: “Mikey, we never talk online anymore!” And it's true, I've had a busy six months, and I'm always filling my days up with living, with the result being that when I am online I'll often not sign into chat anymore, and although I always have Skype open the criteria for getting onto my Skype contact list is unachievable for everyone in the world, aside from my immediate family. But life is busy, I have filled my days up with active living. Yet somehow I still feel itches to write from time to time.

This morning while talking to my friend on Facebook, even within that conversation of typed words I felt the itch of creative, or expressive writing. We talked a bit about the seasons, how I am not liking the heat and humidity of Auckland at the moment, everything feels damp all the time at the moment. My friend was talking about the white winter in their part of the world, and I felt jealous at the prospect of a white Christmas. I mentioned that my favourite season has always been autumn. I know that spring has always been the season that people paint as the season of birth and growth, and autumn is often the season of death, and dying off. But for some reason I always see autumn in a much different light. I guess it might have something to do with the fact that while growing up we would start each new school year at the beginning of autumn. As a result I have a strong sense of autumn as being the season of change, the season of breaking the old shackles that held us back before, the season in which we prepare and strengthen for the struggles that may lie ahead in winter, and the season in which we clear the foundations which will turn into the brilliant growth that spring allows. In some ways that is what I see as the purpose of this blog “Change of Season”.

New Zealand is a unique country in a number of ways. Because NZ is a sub-tropical country the native trees here do not lose their leaves for winter, however all of the introduced native European trees do shed their foliage over the winter months. By the school of business building at the University of Auckland the sidewalk is the home to a number of oak trees, which dump loads of leaves onto the pavement each autumn. I've always loved walking through piles of leaves on the sidewalk, kicking them with my feet as I take each step. One year in particular I made a little game out of the leaves by the school of business. I carefully gathered up the leaves into two large piles, one on each side of the sidewalk. I would stand nonchalantly by one of the piles as someone approached my trap, and when they were in range I would begin either throwing or kicking leaves at them. My plan was to encourage them to take part in a spontaneous leaf fight directly outside the school of business building. For the most part people would just kind of ignore me, some would laugh, but there was one person in particular who got into the spirit of things. At first he started picking up leaves from my pile and throwing them at me, but I pointed out the pile I had already made for him, and the leaf fight began in earnest. Part of me hoped that that one leaf fighter was a student at the school of business, and that perhaps, just maybe, by his having a leaf-fight that one day he learned something important about stepping away from the bleakness of the business world, and that he developed a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of everyone, especially those who walk past you down the sidewalk each day. Although I hope that that is the case, I really hold zero expectation that our leaf fight made one inch of difference in the future direction of his life.

I have many hopes for life. I have many hopes that somehow I can use my life to positively influence the lives of others. That is why I am studying to be a nurse, that is why I have always been interested in social justice issues, and why I've found myself spending more and more of my spare time dedicated to helping the more vulnerable members of Auckland city. I often hope that I can help people see things from different perspectives, in a way that allows them to be more understanding of points of view that differ from theirs, and take on board the reality that perhaps we don't have everything figured out perfectly in our own little worlds. I think this last reason is why I feel inclined to write. At the same time, I know that people will read something according to what they want to see in it, or according to their pre-conceived notions about something, and being able to change those things is not in the power of the writer, but solely property of the reader.

I worry greatly about a trend that people have in adopting philosophical world views which minimize the experiences, lives, actions and opinions of others. I get very nervous and somewhat sad when I encounter a world-view which incorporates a mechanism whose sole purpose is to explain away any dissenters or critics. I find it to be an incredibly human-denying act to minimize another persons opinions, to simplify them to the point of absurdity and then criticize the simplification or to dismiss anything they say using one world-view to dismantle an unrelated world-view.

I think it is an important point to note that knowledge is state-specific, a phrase that gets thrown around a lot by the NZ Krishnas, often without a full grasping of the connotations of the phrase. Essentially, what you go looking for you will find, or what you are aware of is all you will be able to perceive. I think it's almost ironic as well that when one is subject to the experience of being dismissed by a mechanism someone has received through their world-view system, it is easier to see how similar mechanisms world throughout society.

While writing my last entry in my previous blog project I did a little bit of reading of a few things I knew to be online which illustrated a mechanism used to dismiss the things I expressed within that blog. I know, from personal experience, that people cannot hold onto doctrines and dogma which they constantly fight against inside their heads whenever faced with them. I was recently very privileged to have the opportunity to hear a presentation of sorts from an ex-pastor, ex-youth-pastor as part of an Advent in Art series at Cityside Baptist Church in Auckland. His presentation gave me a lot to think about.

For starters, he talked about some of the less-healthy social mechanisms which he saw occurring within the charismatic church setting in which he acted as a youth pastor for some time. He talked about how his uneasiness with some of these mechanisms resulted in accusations that he was not 'in the spirit'. I personally felt a strong sense of understanding that painful situation. I left a religious community after having to finally acknowledge that many of the tenets of that religious philosophy made me feel very uneasy. It is not possible to hold on forever to something that you cannot accept, and the stress of attempting to do so is horribly unhealthy. Yet, instead of accepting and acknowledging that people will process their world-views over time, and sometimes their world-views will progress and change, sometimes they will cast off the old shackles of one world-view to allow for another to grow up and mature in it's place, instead of accepting their very real, human, personal process of growth and change that takes place in people's lives, many world-views will contain mechanisms to prevent from allowing recognition to the changes of others. I heard from an ex-pastor who experienced the accusation of not being spirit filled enough, and that was the reason for his changing faith, while I personally have had the accusation of being influenced by the power of illusion which draws us away from God. While every internally consistent world-view has the right to form explanations for occurrences, it does no one any favours when these mechanisms are used to dismiss the personal developments, experiences, growths and doubts of other people. In fact, by dismissing these doubts, by dismissing a person who undergoes a change of personal understandings the dismissers misses the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others. Believe it or not you CAN learn from the experiences of those who hold radically different world-views than yourself.

It is incredibly sad, I think, that many religious and spiritual communities, which should have love, acceptance, compassion and understanding as the guiding principles of their practices instead often take to criticism, blaming, dismissing and de-personalizing those who change courses and take on or accept a different path or a different understanding. I think that religious world-views that do not acknowledge the fact that people go through different stages of faith development is an unhealthy world-view.

But listening to the developing story this former-pastor continued to tell I began to feel another sense of sadness. As I listened I realised that maturity and growth that this former-pastor possessed as a result of all that he had been through, as he finally found himself voted out of his role as a pastor under a situation that he found to be rather troubling, and I think rightfully so. This former-pastor now seemed to hold a faith that he had moulded in a personal way, in a way mature way, and in an honest way. And for some reason I felt struck with a sense of sadness thinking about this. The sadness I felt had to do with the fact that many of the critics of religion and spirituality, in their over-simplifying and de-personalising spirituality would dismiss the incredibly heartfelt experiences and maturely developed faith I felt and saw within this former-pastor. I felt a sadness that some people hold a world-view which dictates to them that all religious people are less-intelligent, immature and lacking in some way, and therefore whatever religious sentiments they express should be dismissed; another wonderful mechanism granted by a world-view to depersonalise the experiences of others. Yet I sat and found myself feeling humbled by what I saw in this man, his growth through his struggles, and how his faith had matured and developed away from a more dogmatic stage of faith, and more into a flexible, accepting yet firm understanding and relationship.

Everyone has a right to hold their own world-view, but when these world-views develop mechanisms which restrict the holders from acknowledging not only the validity of other's world-view's, but also dismisses their very personal experiences in life, and minimizes the maturity, intelligence and emotions which form the basis of their developed world-view, then there is a failure which restricts the possibility of loving others fully, and gaining greater perspectives by understanding where they have come from.

I wish I could write something that would actually make people see the value in other people's lives. I wish I could write something that would make people dismantle the mechanisms they hold in their lives which restrict them from appreciating the paths people have taken in their lives, and the way their world-views have developed so organically in their lives. But I know that writing isn't that powerful of a tool as to be able to dismantle the mechanisms that people use to protect themselves. Those mechanisms can only be dismantled from the inside out. As I dismantle mine, and through that process gain a deeper understanding of love, and a deeper confidence in my developing stages of faith, I hope that others would step forward into a deeper understanding of what compassion truly means.

The seasons are changing in life all the time. Although it's nearly 10 at night now the humidity and heat are still ridiculous, and I feel a longing for a whiter Christmas, or for a pile of oak leaves to throw at someone in an attempt to bring deeper thoughts into their life. As I finish this first of hopefully many entries of my new blog project I'll leave you with two quotes I have always loved by Schroedinger, the famous physicist and biologist, who thought deeply on the philosophical issues of life and the experience of the person within this world:

“I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity.

Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.” (Schroedinger 1954, 93).

“I shall quite briefly mention here the notorious atheism of science. The theists reproach it for this again and again. Unjustly. A personal God can not be encountered in a world picture that becomes accessible only at the price that everything personal is excluded from it.

We know that whenever God is experienced, it is an experience exactly as real as a direct sense impression, as real as one’s own personality. As such He must be missing from the space-time picture. ‘I do not meet with God in space and time’, so says the honest scientific thinker, and for that reason he is reproached by those in whose catechism it is nevertheless stated: ‘God is Spirit’.” (Schroedinger, as cited in Moore 1990, 379; see also Schroedinger’s Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1958, p. 68).