Faith

Faith & Fatherhood: the Problem of Anxiety Monday, 01 March 2010 21:04 Written by SeanC

I struggle with stuff.  I’m a struggler.  In my circles, I hear the word “struggle” and it’s variants quite often.  So, to me it’s become such a familiar word that I’ve sort of lost touch I think with what “struggle” really means.  Is the word  a familiar one to you?  Do you find yourself using it borderline flippantly?

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My first son- Tigger, well he’s kinda high-strung.  He just turned 5.  I feel bad, because sometimes I wonder if I’ve taught him to be that way or if somehow by God’s providence or our common state of brokenness, Tig’s got a genetic predisposition towards anxiety.  The proud parents are fond of attributing his anxiety to a highly complex and greatly sophisticated sense of routine and order.  But the fear-ridden inner me wonders otherwise.  I want Tig to have a healthy respect for the things that can hurt him.  I want him to have a desire for order and a stable life.  I do the best I can to create that environment for him without squeezing his gigantic life-force into a me-sized box.

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Faith & Fatherhood: What Will I Say? Tuesday, 23 February 2010 00:00 Written by SeanC

I rubbed the ashes off of my forehead about a mile from my home.  Tigger was in the backseat, but he never really asked.  Mo would be asleep when I got home.  As the man had pushed his blackened finger to my forehead, he looked into my eyes while I sang my song and said “remember- from dust you were made, and to dust you will return.”  As he was tracing the cruciform on my head, I remember thinking that I didn’t really know what I would say to Tig if he asked me why my face was dirty.  He was in the next room.

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There are intricacies to faith.  I don’t know them all.  I believe though that signs and symbols are important.  I try to explain them as best as I can when we come across them.  Sometimes I just can’t do it right.

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I remember reading a book in college by somebody who took great pains to examine the intersections between the “Sacred” and the “Profane”.  He talked about how virtually every society in human-history had very deep symbology.  Houses had poles that functionally served to support the roof, but they also represented something greater- this would vary some from one people-group to another.  Often the tools would be inscribed.  Or some aspect of their work routine sacralized and celebrated as a community, like planting time, or harvest.  Connected with sex, and birth, and with death.  And then things like sex, birth and death, marriage would be further tied back into the cycles of the seasons, and their stories of creation, or eschatology.  Life was unified.  And they used symbols to show how.  So they would remember.  I want to remember too.

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Faith & Fatherhood: the Sacred and the Mundane Tuesday, 16 February 2010 00:00 Written by SeanC

That pretty well sums it up:  the sacred and the mundane.  I live a life of diapers, discussions, and barn-filthy floors.  It’s all harmless material.  We use cloth diapers.  Suga-momma and I were talking to a friend about it- she just couldn’t get her head around having her hands in poop.  “Dude, it’s just a little poop.”

The dining room floor is another matter.  We have hardwood floors-  they were absolutely perfect when we moved in.  Quartersawn fir, with a clear finish.  The grain would shimmer like a weird hologram sticker when the sun struck.  I love wood.  But that was before.  Before we started dropping oatmeal on it, and spaghetti, and crayon pieces, and dust-bunnies, and pushing the couch away from the wall so we could run around it in circles.  That was before we started launching little matchbox cars in high trajectories so they would bury themselves in the floor, leaving pits.  Before we started pushing BIG cars down the stairs, just to observe chaos in action.  That was before.

The walls are marked, already!  With tire tracks, with the small scratches from my guitar cases, which lean against the wall in the corner.  The table is pathetically scarred.  Guitar picks tease me from the cold-air returns.  At least they’re not lonely.  There lie also a small Nemo, several small time coins, and peanuts.  And the floor register cover from the upstairs hallway.  Yeah.  Upstairs.  Mo took up the register in his mighty hand, and turned it vertical.  Then, noting the weight of gravity, and the dark vastness of the furnace, he dropped it.  Right down through the wall.  I was sitting next to that very wall, working dutifully at my computer (Facebook or Craigslist, I’m sure), when the house came down around my head.

Calmly, I stood up from my repose, and walked quietly up the stairs.  Tigger reported that Mo had dropped the floor register cover through the floor.  And he thinks maybe a watch too.

“Mo?  Did you do this?”

“(nodding, thumb in mouth) Mo dit it,” he said around his thumb.

I won’t detail what immediately followed.  Skipping.

When the maelstrom quieted, I again walked calmly down to the basement, expecting to find a smoking, creaking pile of aluminum ductwork and a small brown register.  Alas, there was nothing but cobwebs and two underfed, and perhaps more tragically, undereducated mousers eager for the opportunity to explain their cases.

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Faith & Fatherhood Part II Wednesday, 10 February 2010 12:12 Written by SeanC

WHY? Whether contemplative or frustrated, rhetorical or inquisitive, exasperated or exhausted, inquiry or inquisition, I have, on occasion, found the word on my lips.

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I'm not sure why, but sometimes when I look into the wide eyes of my oldest son, I get a hopeless feeling. Tigger has no problem getting looked in the eye. I think he's just as interested in looking at mine. 'Mo- he's not that interested in being stared at. Grr, well, she almost can't bear it. It's so exciting for her to be looked at that it sometimes appears to me that her head is going to explode from the sheer magnitude of joy.

His eyes are youthful. The whites are unencumbered by the red streaks of stress. They are new, soft looking. Ready. For reasons I can't come up with, his pupils always seem huge. Like a living anime character. Sometimes, I look into his anime eye and I feel time in a slightly different way. Like, I'm in his place, and looking at my father, who's in my place, looking at his father. And on and on. Like two mirrors facing each other. And I feel the age of the earth.

At times like that I find the "word" on my lips.

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