Father’s Day, 2019

We launched our Daily Meditations on Mother’s Day and called for a less anthropocentric view of the holiday, urging a Mother Earth consciousness since the Earth we know is in peril. 

So today, Father’s Day 2019, I wish to celebrate our Fathers and Grandfathers.  In a number of ways we have been doing exactly that the past weeks with our meditations on the archetypes of Fatherhood and Grandfatherhood (the elders) as integral to the Sacred Masculine. 

Happy Father’s Day to all Fathers!  And Deep Healing to those sons and daughters who may have hoped their fathers had been more true to the “nobility inside.”

But also on Father’s Day 2019 I want to speak to Fatherhood on a larger scale.  I have written about the Sacred Marriage between Father Sky and Mother Earth:  “What we call the ‘sky’ is the very air we and all beings breathe.  By standing on the Earth and breathing, we have already married Father Sky and Mother Earth; inside us, they have already ‘tied the knot.’”*

The Mother Earth picture above was taken by an astronaut and has permeated much of our hearts and minds for decades.  But the very special Father Sky icon below was delivered to our species 19 years ago by Voyager One as it was leaving our solar system—the first object made by humans that has left our Milky Way. 

On leaving our sphere, Voyager One looked back on its journey and snapped this picture of where it had come from—namely, Earth.  What is Earth in this picture?  A speck of light.  A dot of light.  Isn’t that an icon to imprint on all our minds, to inculcate in all our education from pre-school through graduate and professional school and arts and crafts schools? 

Doesn’t it tell us something very important, namely that all our wars, all our strife, all our divisions, all our conjured up hatreds for one another, all our racial, religious, gender, cultural differences are nothing compared to this one fact: Our home, the Earth, is a mere speck of light…but on it are all of us.  All our histories, all our yearnings, all our ancestors, all our descendants, all our broken hearts and all our aspiring hearts. 

Why spend $56,000 per second on weapons when our primary task is to preserve this Earth for generations to come—not just of humans to come but of all the species we share the Earth with today. What is needed today is not toxic masculinity but good, sacred masculine energy, spiritual warriors, male and female, to protect Mother Earth.

Father Sky is speaking to us.  Are we listening?

Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, p. 224.  For more on the Sacred Marriage of Father Sky and Mother Earth, see pp. 224-231.
Banner image: Earthrise, taken December 24, 1968 by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders (photograph: NASA.gov)

Queries for Contemplation

Meditate on the Voyager One picture of Mother Earth taken from Father Sky.  What lessons is it telling you (and us)?

Meditate on the picture of Mother Earth taken by the astronauts.  What lessons is it telling you (and us)?

What feelings fill you from these two icons in a “sacred marriage”?

Recommended Reading

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.

Learn More