An Article from Creation Magazine
The Realm of the Nurturing Father
George Taylor
Recently Jerry, a friend of mine, told me a story about a time he and his son were playing baseball together. Curious, his son asked him where baseball came from, and Jerry started to make up a long story.
After he told it for a while, Todd, his son, got mad and said, "I know when you're telling me a story, and I don't like it.”
Jerry stopped what
he was doing; then he said to Todd, "When
I was a kid, my father used to tell stories to me. He'd string me along, say
things like 'the moon is made of green cheese.’ I didn't like it either, but
I never knew how to tell him to stop. I'd feel embarrassed when he'd finally
say, ‘Oh, that isn't the way it really is.’”
Then Jerry said to his son, "You know, Todd, I love you so much, and telling stories is the way I learned to express that."
Listening to Jerry, I felt the power of what he had done. By allowing Todd to express his dissatisfaction, and by describing his experience with his father, Jerry was cleaning up a little piece of father-son unconsciousness. By such actions with his son, Jerry was helping to give birth to a new form of male parenting.
In “Gods in Everyman”, Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen describes a missing god of the Greeks, a god whom myths predicted would come to Earth to rule with an "all-loving" heart. This missing god would supplant Zeus, who rules from his Mount Olympus throne as a distant Sky Father. As a father, the missing god would be more involved with his children.
Her book describes this god in Greek mythology as an image for, or as a way of thinking about, a figure who is also absent from the Western psyche: a nurturing Earth father who protects and cares for his children in a daily, personal way.
When I asked Bolen to describe the kind of caring and closeness men wanted from their fathers, she said, "When they were small, men were asking for more physical contact and tenderness from him. As adults, they want him to have feelings. Men want to be recognized by their fathers."
She continued, "There's a larger picture, too. What this culture needs is both strong, wise mothers and powerful, nurturing fathers. A new model for parenting must come from the generations of sons in this culture. For instance, Luke Skywalker, in George Lucas' "Star Wars" movies, believes that he has a loving father, even though Darth Vader doesn't believe in himself. Luke acts on his beliefs, and transforms his father."
Dr. Bolen’s story outlines one of the challenges for men: believing in the essential goodness of their fathers, and therefore themselves, in a time when the culture presents them many negative images of manhood. She also said, "I marvel that men can bond at all, given the hierarchy of hazing that starts in kindergarten. To be sensitive is to be an outsider."
Robert, a man who was in one of my men's groups a few years ago, talked about this hazing. "When I was a kid, I was in constant fear at school, fear of being pounded because I was the only Jewish kid there."
He described the effects of being in our weekly group. "I'm finally healing my wounds with men, my judgments of them. I always got along great with women, and I thought men were less than women, not as perceptive, or as intelligent. I thought men were more angry and ruthless. Now when I hear men talk about their fathers, or how they were disadvantaged or abused, I can identify with it. Somehow I get a sense of camaraderie from this; we share the same issues and problems with our fathers."
About the camaraderie in men's groups, Dr. Bolen said, "To trust one's own sex is very healing. And it can only be done in a same sex group, where love and respect are present. Men can say, 'There's a lot of good in men. My previous experience of them was not complete.'”
For more than two decades, men have been touching this need for male support and affection. In weekly groups and weekend retreats, men are banding together to explore their identities and their desire to feel and express an earthy male nurturing. It is appropriate that much of this nurturing is done by surrogate fathers, the leaders and members of the men's meetings.
In ethnic cultures which have retained their men's rituals and initiations, it is not the father who ritualizes the boy's acceptance into the men's culture. A group of men enact ancient ceremonies for the "class" of initiates, the new men; frequently one of the young man's uncles acts as chief initiator. So we follow ancient traditions of our gender, when we as men gather to tell our stories. and provide each other with a container for growth and healing.
I asked Dr. Shepherd Bliss. a teacher of men's studies and psychology at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California, what he thought attracted men to men's groups: "Men want to break out of their loneliness. Our pathology is isolation, and in these groups men receive various kinds of contact: physical, intellectual, soulful. Men need to shift their attention from their fathers to their brothers, to their peers. We need to trust our brothers more, and to rearrange our expectations. Sometimes men expect too much from their fathers. We need to stop looking for the Sky Father and re-parent ourselves within the community of men."
When I asked him how men do this, Bliss said, "By identifying what I'm calling toxic masculinity, the ways we are abusive, violent, ignoring of human needs. We need to regenerate another kind of masculinity. At the base of each man there's a loving boy who was born into the world with a healthy soul that was somehow damaged."
Robert described to me in our men’s group one night how the male community had helped him generate a positive form of masculinity. "In our group, I was supported and encouraged to experience all my feelings. As a kid I was told not to feel. When I accept my own feelings now, I’m more comfortable with allowing my son to feel whatever is going on for him. He's much more able than I was at his age to express himself. As I become more at peace with my own masculinity, I develop a stronger sense of being a father. I take on the meaning, the depth and responsibility of that role. I feel closer to my son as a little man. He's not just my son. He's a young man.”
"Let me tell you this story,” he continued. "There's a place in the redwoods where I've been taking David since he was a newborn baby. One Sunday, this was many years ago now, we were watching the 49er football game while his mother was having some women friends over. When the game was over, we went down to the park to play football. I played Joe Montana; David was Jerry Rice, the receiver. I wasn’t a good Montana, he wasn't a good Rice, but we had fun.”
Then it was getting dark, and I said, 'Let's go to the valley of the giants.' That's what I call this place in the redwoods. We sat down in the pine needles, in the circle of nine or ten tall redwoods, listening to the waterfall in the background. For the first time, I was connecting with David, not out of pride or satisfaction, but in a different way, a new way I learned about in our group. I experienced a sense of responsibility, durability, a deeper bond.”
“I sat and held him in my arms and felt his little
arms around me. Then I said to him, 'These trees have meant a lot to me.'
I went over and hugged a tree as hard as I could. David said, 'That looks
silly.’ But I encouraged him and then he did it. Both of us were there hugging
these big trees in the redwoods.
I said to him, 'Come here, David,’ and he did. 'Now hug my legs as if I were a tree.' He did so; his little arms reached up to my waist. I said, 'I love you, David.' He replied, 'I love you, Daddy.’”
"Then I said, 'If you ever get lonely, or frightened, maybe when you're a teenager, or when I'm not around, you can come up here and hug a tree and pretend it's me.' He smiled and beamed with delight."
Robert looked at the group with tears in his eyes. “David may not remember that night so long ago, but I do.”
Maybe the missing god, the one with the all-loving heart, was growing inside Robert and his son, as they bonded with each other on the floor of the redwood forest. As such men and boys as these learn to speak their truth together, the Sky Father Can let go of his isolation and come down to Earth, to engage in real relationships with family and community.
This movement of men to reclaim their earthiness, their compassion and their truth is essential. What indeed could such a generation of fathers and sons do for planetary and personal healing'? As the efforts of men and women give birth to the missing god, time will tell.
George Taylor, MFT, has been leading groups for men for 25 years. He wrote “Talking with Our Brothers,” a book about men in groups. He and his wife, Debra, created "The Courage to Love" seminars for men and women learning about relationship.