Tracing the Fatherline

I was not raised in a home where open discussion about religion transpired. All I knew was that my father was raised Catholic, attended Catholic school, and as an adult reflected upon his alter boy youth with a deep-seated resentment earmarked most fervidly for the nuns – nuns of the 1950’s and early 1960’s who, from my father’s reports, fancied a nice ruler smack-down from time to time. On the few occasions when he openly speaks of his experience, he assumes a wry smile as long held sentiments bathed in disillusionment and sarcasm catapult off his tongue and into the reality shared between he and his captivated audience (usually me).

Sometimes the sarcastic remarks and dry humor spill into a ephemeral expression of anger. Anger towards the Church, the nuns, the priests, the repression, the guilt. Every once in a blue moon for a very, very brief moment, the displacement of anger crumbles into ruins, from which arises the grief of an 8 year-old boy who tragically lost his father in the Fall of 1960. An 8 year-old boy who asked his grandfather why is young father had to die.

“Because God wanted your Daddy with him.”

To which my father defiantly replied, “But we need him here!”

My father shared this memory with me on one of those rare days when we connect over the pieces of his life story he’s willing to leave with me, his daughter. My father shared this memory, and suddenly his frustration and general rejection of dogma and religious authorities translated into an incredibly painful test of faith. I’m sure my great-grandfather meant to comfort his grandson and likely leaned on his own words during this dark time. My great-grandfather’s words, dredged from the silty shore of his own hard-wired belief system, were intended to console the inconsolable, explain the unexplainable, frame the unthinkable.

Instead, my father heard this rendering of the message: God selfishly betrayed you.

I write about this, because time is passing. Time is passing and one of these days we will confront loss. Time is passing and my father’s life is over the half-way mark. He speaks of death as the end-all-be-all.

“Someday I’ll die and be six feet under. That’s that.”

As my father’s daughter, it disturbs me to hear this, though I accept his views – for all I know, he could be absolutely right. Perhaps there is nothing else beyond this one lifetime. I can bear that, and still I wonder how his outlook towards death, the Divine, and one’s place in the world might’ve unfolded had his early years panned out differently. How is it that one child might lean into religious explanations of loss whereas another’s trust is forever fragmented.

Like my father, I have difficulty devoting my faith to an all-powerful being whose attributes are ascribed by people afflicted by the human condition. This co-exists with the primal wish that indeed some omniscient being is out there, somewhere, looking out for me. The desire to assuage the existential human dilemma of isolation (via an externalized representation of the ever-present, omniscient Father or Mother) runs side-by-side with the existential givens of freedom and responsibility (I desire freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility and agency – which again lead to a fundamental isolation).

In reading and investigating spiritual traditions, I find myself repeatedly running into this question of a spiritual path that may or may not be bound in religion. One could practice meditation or magic without an attachment to an ultimate Creator. One could also engage with such practices through an attunement to God(s)/Goddess(es). One could interpret a God or Goddess in a literal sense – a Divine puppet master, a very real being with whom one can commune with. Or the God or Goddess can be interpreted as symbolic representations of Universal energy…or as projections of the human psyche.

I’m at a standstill right now, as I’m not sure exactly where I fall. For now, I sit, reflect, self-educate, and remain open.