I don’t have a father to phone for Father’s Day this year, he died in 2020.  Nor will I call my grandfathers today, since they passed away in 1972 and 1984.  Nor are there any great-grandfathers awaiting my homage, as they were buried in 1906, 1940, 1960, and 1981.  

Plus, all the other father-figures of my life are now deceased: scoutmasters, coaches, high school teachers and college professors, life-altering authors, pastoral mentors, old men in my churches who taught me a thing or two—all gone.  

I see myself as a father, but that’s different, irrelevant to Father’s Day.  Ask me what I want for Father’s Day and it’s stuff my kids and grandkids can’t give me:  some rain on my garden and the Cubs to beat the Orioles today.  Ask me what I really, REALLY want, and it’s stuff that will take more than just a day—it will take years and be ongoing:  for my kids to find love, be strong, and make the world a better place.  I expect a lot for Father’s Day, just not all in one day.

I have my own customized definition of fatherhood, and motherhood. We all do.  Those definitions were formed from the personalities and capacities of our own parents and parent-figures, their presence and absence in our lives, their strengths and flaws.  We spend a lifetime trying to understand what they did for us-- and to us.  And sometimes we need a psychotherapist to help us sort it all out. But in the end, my definition of “father” is never exactly the same as yours, even if you are my brother.

And to make matters monumentally more complex, we Christians throw in the concept of God the Father.  While this can sometimes be liberating and comforting, it can just as easily mess us up, theologically, politically, and emotionally--depending on how we define “father.”  

For myself,  my father was the push in my life and my mother the pull. My father pushed me out into the world and expected me to navigate its challenges.  He wanted the world out there to strengthen me.  And he wanted me to make the world a better place than I found it.  To accomplish all this, he came across as tough, determined to toughen me up as well.  I never saw him cry. Nor did I notice his tenderness until I was over forty.  He made it clear that I was expected to launch as soon as high school was over.  He was the centrifugal force in my life—thrusting me outward.

My mother, on the other hand, was a balance to him.  They worked as a team.  She kept her children tethered, was the centripetal force, pulling homeward.  The father was the one who pushed us out, the mother pulled us in.  It all seemed healthy and balanced.  One gathered and the other scattered.  For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:  along with a parent to preside, or a parent-figure.

Parenthood is how we help the next generation advance and retreat through life, how we assist them with our nurture, our spirit, our encouragement.  Yet for all of our fuss over biology and gender, parenthood colors outside the lines.  A biological mother has postpartum depression, and the biological father steps up, or a biological grandmother, or a total non-relative.  A biological father is abusive, or runs off, and the single mother steps up and gives the child a double portion of parenting, or a teacher, or a coach, or an uncle.  Fatherhood does not come from the XY chromosome or some stray sperm.  It comes from a God blessed-love that lights upon a person, and inspires that person, man or woman or non-cisgendered individual, to step up and provide something some particular person in the next generation needs.  

It was always awkward, when I was an active pastor, to celebrate Father’s Day in church.  How exactly to do that? Ask all the fathers to stand up?  Give them a bag of cookies?  Sing “Faith of Our Fathers?”  

But maybe ask all the deadbeat dads to sit back down?  And confiscate the cookies of those dads who were too busy to pay attention to their kids?  

Or maybe let's just applaud all the men in the church.  But then what about the women sitting in the pews who were always the first to man-up whenever you really needed someone to take charge in a crisis?  No matter how I observed Father’s Day, it always felt like a sham. 

As long as we confine Mother’s Day and Father’s Day to biology and gender, we’ll botch the opportunity to identify and be grateful for those who have given us an assist along the way.  As long as we define “mother” and “father” too narrowly, we’re likely to overlook what they contributed to our lives.  Not every father was like my own, or like me.  

My Grandpa Haworth was soft and warm and tender.  My mother called him “daddy” until the day he died.  On the other hand, Grandma Haworth expected her kids to call her “mother.”  Who do you suppose wore the pants in that family?  My Grandma Smith was so nurturing that she pushed her kids away, else they smother.  My Grandpa Smith talked tough, but deep down was himself afraid of the world and venturing very far into it.  If Father’s Day was the day to celebrate those who gave the next generation a push, I’d be remembering my grandmothers. 

I realize that it would only be half the sales for Hallmark, and any other industry that makes money on Mothers and Fathers Days, but I’m for rebelling against their constricted definitions and replacing them with an “Elders” day.  And let’s do it up big:  stretch it out over a week or more.  Let’s name names.  Let’s count our blessings.  Let’s re-inspire each generation to stretch and sacrifice itself for the generations to come.  

In the meantime, I see that the Cubs lost to the Orioles today, and it doesn’t look like it will rain here in Urbana—again.  And so I didn’t get what I wanted for my Father’s Day.  But I’m still blessed, and happy, and hopeful that the things that matter most to me have been planted well into my spirit, and there are still people in my life, including my kids and grandkids, who are open minded and open hearted enough to accept what I can still offer.

Whoever you are, have a blessed day, grateful memories, and a renewed spirit to share with the next generation.