Want to move mountains? Move father first
by Michael Marlin
As a child steeped in mythology, I learned how the gods could be benevolent, tricksters, demons, and furies to be celebrated and feared. Like a primitive man, I sought to appease the gods that were my parents. I thought everybody’s parents were the same.
Children don’t know what parenting is supposed look like, so they accept it, regardless of their circumstances or treatment.
The forgotten language of fathers and sons
by Peter H. Putnam, Jr.
In April 1998, my father is lying in a South Carolina hospital with a ventilator plugged into his throat. He has no voice. He once sang “Impossible Dream” in an impossibly deep bass voice, now this man has no voice. He lay prone, a child. He is no longer 6 feet tall, no longer the frightening, booming, hair-cutting, wisecracking, story-telling giant of my childhood. He is a a dying man in a hospital bed with no voice.
The Big Lie: How the truth changes us
by Peter Clothier
I had just lost my job, the third in a multi-year succession of academic positions with increasing status and responsibility from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. To be utterly honest, I had been kicked out, as I had been from my two previous jobs. I had refused to conform to academic standards and expectations.
My chief sin was that I had published poetry rather than scholarly articles.
A Man’s Call to Man-Making
by Earl Hipp
My wife and I met the Sudanese refugee Ojulu Agote and his family in 1993 through the sponsoring organization that brought them to the United States. Ojulu had experienced the horrors of tribal warfare and then the abuses of refugee life. After making his way through countless bureaucratic barriers, he was without any material resources. He and his family, living in a cockroach infested one-bedroom apartment, were facing a mountain of practical needs.
Fathering our daughters
by Jim Coleman
Hugging granddaughter in 2000
I’m a father with four daughters and six grandchildren — two grandsons and four granddaughters. Doing men’s personal work along with corporate training and teaching for more than two decades as a trained facilitator and workshop leader, I’ve constantly heard about how men need to be fathers to their sons. I’ve also heard a lot about women and their daughters. So I’ve been asking myself, what about us fathers who have daughters? What is our responsibility to them? What do our daughters need from us as fathers? How do fathers wound their daughters? How do we bless our daughters?
My big boy’s deepest needs: What I learned about myself as a Boys To Men mentor
By Noë Gold
On the weekend of November 8, 2008, I “went through” again.
What does that mean? you might ask. To the uninitiated, the term is meaningless. What did you go through? Where did you come from that you had to go through something to get there, and what did you find on the other side of whatever it is you went through? And, of course, would you do it again?
I called my Dad
by Keith Jarvis
On Father’s Day in 2004, I had the plan – or the idea of the plan – in the back of my mind for quite some time. I’d sent my Dad cards in previous years for Father’s Day and Christmas and even his birthday, when I could remember. I deliberately didn’t send him a card this year; I think I was trying to force myself to give him a call.
Keith and his Dad in 2003
Poetry: My Sons
by Kit Lueder
Sometimes my sons are Children of the Sun,
Intense and radiant,
Excited and streaming with energy.
Sometimes my sons are Children of the Stars,
Steady and ever-present,
Independent and limitless.
Sometimes my sons are Children of the Moon,
Cool and distant,
Not avoiding but not reaching out.
Sometimes my sons are Children of Venus,
Affectionate and loving,
Close and considerate.
Sometimes my sons are Children of Mars,
Defiant and challenging,
Determined and strong-willed.
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