Father's Day

I took my mother and sister out for lunch for Father's Day. We went to a quaint Japanese restaurant at the end of the Delmar Loop. Afterwards, we went for smoothies. I spent the latter part of the day painting an abstract on canvas(that's what it has become). I've been using various shades of green with patches of sand. It looks like one big mess. I hope the drying time will give it a distinctive look.

It hit me while I was painting that I haven't called my father on this day in years! It probably started out as an angst ridden act of defiance. Subsequently, it has mellowed more into a passive indifference. It isn't that I don't love my father. Quite the opposite. Perhaps, at one time, too much. I use to believe that if my father had been more of an active participant in my life, I would have known years earlier what it meant to be a man.

These days I consider the masculine search for meaning part of the existential quest that every guy has to figure out with or without his father's help. It might have been a bit easier with some guidance, though. I'm fairly sure that my old man gave me everything he had to give. It is hard to admit that what he gave me wasn't enough. I stopped being angry at my father when I finally realized he wasn't holding anything back from me. The proverbial well had run dry a long time ago. There was no more water left to fetch.

I remember when I was in the fifth grade, my father promised one evening to come by the house to hear me play the clarinet. I wasn't any good. Yet, I wanted him to hear pass the squeaks and mis-tune pitch looking for him to approve me for the effort. He never called to say he wasn't coming. It's a difficult lesson to learn at such an age that one's father was unreliable. I should mention he didn't have a car for most of my adolescent and teen years. Years earlier before I was around, my mother taught my father how to drive.

I know my father loves me. Regrettably, we don't know each other as men. It's not an issue of blame, so much as having a lack of things in common. Bloodlines aren't enough to make a connection despite the obvious one that exists. I am grateful that I had male mentors along the years that took an interest me. My youth minister Gary, for instance, always took me to the "Father and Son" banquets at the church. Mr. Connolly, an elder statesman in the same church, sent me to camp one year. He always made sure I had a way to and from church when I needed it. He consistently took me to lunch with his family. I always wanted to be his son.

Am I punishing my father when I don't call him for Father's Day? I don't think so, but I'm not sure. There is a part of me that says I shouldn't reward bad behavior for the ways he didn't behave like a father like all the missed phone calls on my birthday. I am willing to admit on a day like Father's Day, there is a bit of pressure to think I should have a different kind of relationship with my father than the one that we have. Honestly, at this point in my life, it really is enough!

I did spend time today with my mother. She taught me how to hit a ball. She showed me how to ride a bike. It was my mother who took care of me when I was sick. I view Father's Day, as a way of demonstrating our appreciation for the people that played their roles in our lives. Maybe as a compromise, this blog can be a half-way step: "Happy Father's Day!" Incidentally, my painting came out all right. Very green!

Celebrating the Life of My Teacher

A good friend recently shared with me a story about Yogananda, the first Yoga master from India to teach in the West. He was nearing the end of his life, but had postponed his death until his final disciple arrived to meet with him. The interesting part of the story was that it was a disciple he had not yet met. My friend shared that story with me in the context of the passing of our mutually shared spiritual teacher, Ron Roth.

Ron was an amazing man, a gifted spiritual healer, a wonderful teacher. He was a former Roman Catholic priest that left the priesthood in the early 1990s to devote himself to an interfaith healing and teaching ministry. He was an adamant believer that there was only one religion, the religion of love. Rather than attempt to convert people to a particular spiritual path, he invited them to go deeper into their own religious traditions. He sought to bring people together instead of dividing them.

Ron taught that at the heart of each religious and spiritual tradition was the celebration of the Presence, the Deep Mystery of Life, by whatever name we identified it: the Father, the Mother, God, etc. One of his favorite practices was chanting the various names of God from the various spiritual traditions. On Ron's altar, one could find images of various spiritual teachers from Jesus and the Blessed Mother Mary to Shirdi Sai Baba and Ramakrishna.

In the context of Ron's worship services, people were literally healed. Ron said he did not heal, it was God that was the True Healer. Ron's work was to gift people to claim their own healing through their connection to the Sacred. He created a community without walls inviting people of different faiths to come together in the Spirit of Oneness to love God, love themselves, and love others. Towards the end of his life, Ron was recognized by a Indian guru, a recognized Avatar (incarnation of the Divine) to be himself an "Avatar of Causeless Love."

I met Ron prior to the debilitating stroke that left him for the remainder of his life unable to walk and with limited speech. I was led to meet him after reading one of his books. His last public teaching was a small weekend gathering of approximately 50 people in Chicago. That weekend changed my life. Ron set me further on path that led me into prayer, meditation and spiritual healing.

Even in his disabled state, he taught me so much more than I would have discovered on my own. I am the better because of him. Our bond was primarily energetic and spiritual, but no less real. I may have been his last student while he was in the body. I don't know if he was waiting for me, but I was waiting for him. I loved him. And, I miss him dearly.

Ron always said that after his death, he would make more noise on other side. Like St. Padre Pio and St. Teresa of Liseaux, he promised that if we asked for his help, he would provide it. I am not quite sure what I am going to do without the physical presence of a man that was like a spiritual uncle to me. He was funny, insightful, practical, down to earth, and someone with whom I could relate. Ron still has work to do. I do as well. I am one of many that will keep his teachings and spirit available to those that will benefit from them.