In my book on The Hidden Spirituality of Men, the chapter on “Earth Father: The Fatherly Heart” presents fatherhood as one of the most foundational of the ten archetypes put forward on the sacred masculine.
It can make a world of difference to both boys and girls as to what kind of fathering they underwent as children. Often I think of Donald Trump’s father who was a rabid capitalist and racist and member of the Ku Klux Klan. Or of Hitler’s father who, according to psychologist Alice Miller, beat him daily. Or of the emphasis in fascism on the exaggerated role of “Fatherland.” The power of fatherhood can carry a heavy shadow.
Or it can bring great light. As Jeffrey Masson writes in his book, The Evolution of Fatherhood: A Celebration of Animal and Human Families, fatherhood is “the greatest joy and the greatest expression of love of which the human male is capable.” He tells us that in the animal world, some animals are very benevolent fathers from which we can learn important lessons. Included are penguins, wolves, sea horses, marmosets, and beavers.
These animal parents do all they can to secure the safety of their young…When I look at animal fathers protecting their children, risking their lives for them, I see no reason to believe that they don’t feel something akin to what I feel. For example, emperor penguin fathers act heroically, staying with their eggs through the all but unbearable winter, fasting, balancing the precious eggs on their feet, barely moving, hardly sleeping until their mate returns from her time at sea.
He writes: When I visit the playground on a weekend and see all the fathers, men looking bored, no doubt, but still there when they could be someplace else, I am struck by how children come into our lives and simply demand that we give them immediate priority—and we respond.
There are many pleasures more exciting than sitting in a sandbox with a three-year-old digging holes or sitting at the seashore building castles. More exciting, but in some absolute sense, less fulfilling.
There is nothing that feels more remarkably right than being with our children, attending to their small pleasures, observing with satisfaction their joy.
We may not be emperor penguins, but our embrace of our children is not totally unlike theirs in these moments of parental devotion. We too feel a devotion to our young that makes us forgo ordinary pleasures to ensure that they survive and thrive.
I met a grandmother present for the birth of her son’s first baby. He said to her, “I have never loved anything so fast or so fully as my newborn baby.”
A fatherly heart is the opposite of a distant heart, an absent heart, a cold heart, a heart unwilling or unable to communicate. Mason found that fatherhood is not a state that one comes in and out of; it is not something we “get over.” Furthermore, “we appear to be the only species that can consciously choose how involved we want to be as fathers.”
The “fatherly heart,” Meister Eckhart insists, belongs to God as well as to humans.
It belongs not just to literal fathers but to all citizens who are after all responsible for one another and the kind of world we leave behind for our children. A nice example was on display at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center on Juneteenth Day. Values were celebrated that took us far beyond fascist versions of fatherhood.
Banner Image: Father and son. Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
What are your experiences of healthy fatherhood?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 173-175, 196
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
