I will be your father figure put your tiny hand in mine
I will be the one who loves you til the end of time
“Father Figure”
Faith
George Michael
It only took me a month to write a Father’s Day post. Not bad.
Father’s Day can be a daunting holiday for those of us who grew up without fathers. It’s a reminder of what we never had and never will have.
My lack of a father had a big impact on my view of my religion and spirituality. We tend to anthropomorphize our gods based on our own experiences. Growing up in the Christian faith, I was often presented a god that was a loving father figure. It’s hard to imagine a god as a loving father figure when you have no context for that imagery.
That’s not to say that I didn’t try to imagine the perfect dad. And I was always looking for that male parental figure. I would occasionally find one that would fit for a while, but they were always just temporary. Eventually, through physical or emotional distance, I would lose that person and be orphaned again.
There were some who would encourage me to fill that void with god, but it’s not that simplistic. Even though I could imagine how I would want the ideal dad to talk, act, and be, there is something about having a manifestation of that to hold onto. No matter how much I imagine a father-like god, the Holy Other is still out there. It’s not something physical or tangible. It’s not something I can call on the phone or really share my life with in a meaningful way and receive response in return.
As I have grown in my spirituality, I have learned that it does fill a void, but it can’t replace the things we need in this life. The Universe is beyond comprehension and understanding, and trying to make it fit in a little box does it a huge disservice. On the flip side, trying to fill a hole in our experiential lives with something spiritual doesn’t relieve the pain of that loss. We can lean on our Higher Being to help us recover from and heal the pain. But we can’t look to the spiritual to fill a need that is physical.
While I have learned a lot of coping skills to help deal with the loss of something that never was, I realize that there is an emptiness that will always be a part of me. I may not feel it as acutely, and it may only rear its ugly head a couple of times a year, but it will always be there. I can look to my spirituality to help me survive it, but it cannot replace what never was. It wasn’t meant to, and it’s too big to serve in that capacity.
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July 15, 2012 at 8:41 am
Alex
*hugs* You know I understand, given a recent post from myself on this same topic.
I did find your relating this to religion/god to be interesting. Even leaving aside from all the things that chased me away from the church and made sure I could never stay, I’ll never, ever forget two things said to me by two different someones that took the concept of God from something overly large and “just too much” and made it…I dunno. Easier to relate to?
“It’s ok to be angry with God, Alex. He can take it.”
“I’m not asking you to know the great unknowable secrets of the everything. Just have a cup of coffee and tell him about your day.”
In a really strange way, I had the exact opposite reaction than you did. For me, God went from something way too large to relate to in a meaningful way, to someone I could just talk to because I needed to, but most importantly- someone I didn’t have to be all nicey nice to. I had been given permission to tell him *how I really felt*. Kind of a huge deal for that catholic in me used to standing when told to stand, sitting when told to sit, etc.
It transformed God for me into something, that until you made this post I didn’t really connect the dots on, but…something “fatherly”. I didn’t need him to fix my world and answer every prayer. I just needed him to *be there*.
And to quote Giles from Buffy, it is at that point that “the subtext is rapidly becoming…well….text.”
July 15, 2012 at 9:21 am
blissflower1969
Spiritual journeys are so interesting…and so individual. There are so many aspects of religion that I find limiting to my concept of a Higher Being, and then there are times when I appreciate the parts where we see how the Holy is personal and a part of us. Hard to balance, harder to figure out.
Thanks for stopping and sharing.
We’ll all find our way to something meaningful. I think the journey is more important than the destination. Thanks for sharing the journey with me.