A SON AGAIN

It has been many years since I had a living biological father, and so I must admit to a bit of emptiness as the national observance nears. I do have a truly wonderful step-father. He married my mother after I was already an adult, though, so I suspect the dynamic is different. As I have been going through some dramatic life changes recently, I have found myself pondering what my late father would think of his present moment son. As Dad was vacant via a brain disorder long before he perished, he missed many of the key moments in my life. He never realized I graduated from high school, let alone with honors. He didn’t know of the college scholarships, or the degrees and achievements. He never saw me perform during my entertainment career, or knew of the many places I would travel and explore. He didn’t meet the vast variety of friends I was blessed to traverse this life with, or experience the multiple cities and houses I would come to call home. He didn’t get to champion the career changes, or encourage me during the sometimes difficult transitions. There was indeed a lot that he missed, and I missed having him be a part of it all. There was often a subtle void even during the grandest of experiences. There was a profundity to fathering my father at an early age, and yet the longing to be a son remained for many years into my adulthood.

At the center of these contemplations is a tender and yet persistent quandary as to whether this dad I hardly knew would be proud of the man he’d never know. While he didn’t live to see the accomplishments or the accolades, he also didn’t endure the challenges and the trials, the addictions and the failures. I wince as I ponder what his reaction would have been to those. He was a small town boy who grew up with big time values. He was humble and stalwart, conservative and steady. How would we interact in today’s political climate? What would he have said of my affiliations, and the causes I have devoted myself to? Would this staunch conservative Christian have attended my interfaith ordination, or embraced my current comparatively lofty spiritual beliefs and practices? And perhaps most daunting of all is the question of how he would have handled the most profound of my recent changes: that I left my home state of Florida to travel to Massachusetts where it was legal to marry the man I love? Just two weeks prior to Father’s Day 2010; how would my father have handled that?

I recognize these are questions without answers, and yet they dance through my awareness just the same. I certainly acknowledge the projections of my own consciousness that they represent. I have integrated to a large degree the perfection of how this father-son relationship played out in this incarnation. And yet like gentle whispers the questions return. Would he have still loved me? Could he have understood the depth of love that can exist between two men, and the longing to be treated equally? How would he have reconciled his traditional values and beliefs with those of his seemingly radical son? Would he have shown up at the wedding, and would he have taken my husband as a son? Could we have enjoyed this Father’s Day together, a non-traditional yet loving family? And isn’t that the only value that ultimately matters- the unconditional love of a family structure, regardless of its components?

While my questions regarding my birth father will forever go unanswered, I am once again a son this life time. A man of similar leanings, values, and characteristics did show up at these Massachusetts nuptials. He rose above some of the old moral teachings of his upbringing in order to stand present with his own son on that day. And he called me by a name I thought I’d never hear again. He called me son. He welcomed me into his family as his new son-in-law. As he gathered me to him in a warm and loving embrace, perhaps my own father did give me the answers I so longed to know. While I am now a husband of a husband, I will forever remain his son.


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JUNE RADICAL EXPRESSION

THOUGH I RARELY WRITE REFERRING TO BIBLICAL OR OTHER SACRED WORKS, THIS FELT AN APPROPRIATE REFERENCE TO BEGIN THIS MONTH OF FATHERS DAY. THE STORY OF THE PRODIGAL MAY BE FOUND IN THE NEW TESTAMENT BOOK OF LUKE, THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER.

There is a special sacred place in the mountains of North Carolina that sooths my person and renews me in my Soulfulness. It is the tiny community of Montreat, several glorious acres that the Great Spirit has scooped out of the Black mountain range, and where the hush is as vibrant as any symphony you’ll ever hear. There is a Presbyterian retreat center, a tiny college, a pond masquerading as Lake Susan, a number of personal weekend and group lodgings, and a chapel I have spent many a silent hour within. It is called The Chapel of the Prodigal Son, and while as a physical structure it is relatively new, there is an ancient energy within its walls that captivates my heart as it inspires my contemplations. I have many a time climbed the steep staircase into the heights of the balcony, settled myself into the very last pew, and then exhaled my body into a submissive inner sigh. Though it is a building open to the public, there is seldom a sound save the beating of my heart. I love to first close my eyes and center myself into the feeling of home this prayerful place invokes. Then I open my eyes and my inner being to begin and take in the ceiling to floor fresco that is the back wall of this chapel on a hill.

I feel within me as I see before me a magnificent representation of the Biblical prodigal son as he has just returned to his fathers’ estate. This young man had asked and been granted his inheritance prior to his fathers death, which he promptly squandered in “riotous living.” After a stint of feeding pigs yet practically starving him, the sacred writings say that he “came to himself.” He remembered that he still had a living father that had great wealth beyond what he had been bequeathed. He trusted that though he had acted unconsciously and very unskillfully, his father was the kind of parent that would at some level welcome him back into his home. He goes back to the estate of his birth, and while he is yet a long way off, a servant informs his father that his wayward son is approaching. His father runs to meet him, forgetting and completely forgiving the young man of his earlier transgressions. He hugs and hovers over his exhausted son, attending to his aching physicality and bruised emotionality.

I need not elaborate on the spiritual lesson to be found in this ancient parable. The Source of all we are is always moving toward us experientially as we “come to ourselves” in remembrance of our birthright. It seems to be coming to us, for in It we are forever contained. It is our awakening to that Truth that brings to us the deep feeling of coming home.

While I have at many times felt like that wayward son, it was on a dark and rainy afternoon in the heights of that chapel that a startling realization came to me. This internal aha washed over me like a warm wave of comforting water. I realized that though I had spiritually enjoyed the feeling of being the son being met by the forgiving father, the time had come in my own sacred emergence to step into the role of father for my own internal rebellious boy. Though I am forever Sourced, contained, and a part of the First Cause masculine Principle, I must step into a role of empowered choice while here in this earth realm. I must actively engage my own Divine Will in terms of choosing which identity I will serve. Though I have squandered the inheritance of a Law that works in every whit for my favor, I must forgive that unconscious part of me in order to mature into a higher choice. I must run to meet the story identified Taylor, the one who seeks to outrun the demands of evolving beyond what I have been in the past. If I have spiritually starved, it is only been because I have made choices which do not feed. If I have lost myself in my own version of riotous living, it is me who needs to stop the mental story telling and the deadening behaviors. It is me who needs to father the son, in order to Know the Source.

Perhaps this story is more meaningful to me because I did not have a father to run to me in my fearfulness or to welcome me in my return. This hole in my experience had previously left me longing for that fatherly relation. The patriarchal God of my Biblical past filled that emptiness for awhile. Yet it certainly has its own limitations. But what occurred to me so profoundly in the compassionate embrace of that back row pew is though I long identified with the plight of the prodigal son, it was the prodigal father within myself that I needed to come to. I was the father that was missing in my experience. It is my turn now to run to that fatherless boy, and to welcome him home into this relentlessly loving heart. In the sentiment of that parables ending; I may rejoice now, for I was lost, and now am found. I was dead, yet now I live.


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