Fathers who are deeply spiritual have more in common than they might think with fathers who don’t consider themselves spiritual at all.
Imagine three fathers who have overcome fertility problems to have kids. While putting their children to bed for the night, they reflect on how fortunate they are to be dads, thinking something like this:
Dad #1: “I am so grateful to God for giving me these children. I didn’t always know if I could even be a father, but He made it happen. It’s not always easy, but looking at my kids right now, I’m almost overwhelmed by how much I love them, and that reminds me how much God must love us that he sacrificed his only Son to save us. I pray for the wisdom and strength to be a good father, because I know I can’t do this without the Holy Spirit.
Dad #2: “I’m so glad to be a dad, but I knew it was meant to be, even if it did take IVF, acupuncture, meditation, and that special fertility-enhancing herbal blend to finally make it happen. Being a dad isn’t easy, but concentrating on the love I feel for them in this moment will help me stay centered and get through the tough times. I can’t tell what’s still to come, but I know that everything happens for a reason, so I’ll just do the best I can and trust that I’m being the dad I have to be.
Dad #3: “I feel so lucky to have these kids. I thought it probably couldn’t happen, but I have the amazing luck to live in the right time with the right technology that fertility treatments made it possible. It’s not always easy, but looking at my kids right now, I love them so much I feel like my heart could burst. I know there’s no such thing as a perfect dad, but I’m doing my best and I really hope I don’t let them down or make them suffer from my mistakes.
♦◊♦
Which dads were having a spiritual moment?
If you define “spirituality” narrowly, according to a particular spiritual tradition such as Christianity, then only Dad #1 appears to qualify. He was the only one to frame his intense moment of paternal emotion in terms of God. If you broaden your definition of “spirituality” to allow a wide range of supernatural beliefs, then Dad #2 was also having a spiritual moment; he just framed it in terms that made spiritual sense to him like fate, and assigning causality both to to factors that have a scientific basis (IVF) and ones that don’t (acupuncture). If you think “spirituality” is not about what god or supernatural force is involved, but more about embracing the full power and richness of human emotion, then Dad #3 was having a spiritual moment, too. He believes he owes his present circumstances to a combination of luck and science, but he feels that same love and the weight of his responsibility as those other dads who think there’s some divine or mystical force behind it all.
Framed in terms of spirituality, those three hypothetical dads look pretty different, and if they were real guys having a real conversation about the role of spirituality in fatherhood, they’d probably get into a flame war if that conversation was online, arguing over what counts as spirituality and whether or not it’s desirable. If you just look at what they’re feeling as dads, though, and leave out the differing spiritual perspectives, they’re all the same guy. (At least, that’s how I tried to write them.) Each man is expressing gladness at being a father, a feeling of love that feels bigger than he can hold, and a desire to do right by his kids.
I don’t object to discussions of spirituality, but I think they can obscure the common ground between people because so much time is spent debating what “spirituality” is, or when not debating, failing to notice people aren’t talking about the same thing. To each individual, their concept of spirituality can be so important as to consider it a guiding principle, but that concept varies so much that it’s almost impossible to discuss the same thing. If someone wants to base spirituality on faith in a god, it’s easy for me to respect that without sharing it. If that later turns into some assertion that you can’t truly love your kids unless you’re spiritual…well, now it’s time for spirited disagreement.
To sum up, spirituality is the most important thing there is—except for when it’s completely irrelevant.
—Photo apdk/Flickr
About Marcus Williams
Marcus, at the risk of starting a flame war – which is not my intent – I would say that what makes spirituality important, and relevant, is the belief system that stands behind it. And that belief system is important, because it shapes the “story” that we live by. If father #3 is offering his kids a “story” that luck and science are all you can hang your hat on, that is a markedly different “story” than the one offered by fathers #2 and #3.
Where I do agree with you is that all three dads are equally spiritual when thinking of spiritualty as the “gladness” felt, the “feeling of love that feels bigger than he can hold” and a “desire to do right by the kids”.
So, I will stand on that common ground with you and thank you for your thoughtful contribution to this conversation about spirituality.
A flame war over spirituality? Never!
I appreciate your comment, and think it reinforces my point. When you think of spirituality as having some supernatural element beyond “luck and science”, that effectively excludes Dad #3 from being authentically paternal, if you consider those paternal feelings I described to be impossible without spirituality. Dad’s #1 and #2 don’t fare much better if you think only people with the “right” belief system can be counted as truly spiritual, and you happen to disagree with either of their systems. When you expand your concept of spirituality to include all three dads, because you recognize the authentic feelings of a loving father, it stops being about whose story (or lack of story) is right, and more about the human experience most of us seem to relate to no matter what.
If you see spirituality as the most important thing, it sort of follows that these hypothetical dads aren’t “equally” spiritual, no matter how true they think their feelings are as they feel them. If you expand spirituality to be a nebulous catch-all for all profound feelings, with no specific supernatural beliefs attached, then it stops being “spiritual” in the usual sense of the word and is just a synonym for “feeling human”. I don’t think feeling human is irrelevant, but that’s so different from what “spirituality” means in common usage that I think spirituality stops being a relevant framework for describing it.
Man, you lost me about two sentences in. I think it boils down to two things – 1) the term “supernatural” is an important buzzword for you. I said nothing about supernatural beliefs; 2) I am not willing to accept the traditional or the “common usage” notion of spirituality. I think it limits the conversation.
The thing I was pointing out was that dad #3 bases his worldview on luck and science, and I’m just not sure what kind of “story” that lends itself to.
All three dads attribute the gift of children to something beyond them: dad #1 – to God; dad #2 to purpose; and dad #3 to luck/science.
In my view, all three are trying to name that “other” that has brought them the gift of children. And I think that is a spiritual impulse, any way you look at it.
I’ve been assuming that the spiritual belief systems you’re referring to include supernatural elements: God or gods, souls, divine influence, afterlife…that sort of thing. Am I wrong? I don’t mean “supernatural” as a pejorative, just as a word to describe things that aren’t of this world, but believed to interact with it even if we can’t possibly know how. I disbelieve such things, but the point I’m hoping to make isn’t that I’m spiritual anyway, but that some of the perceived perks of spirituality (using paternal love as just one example) aren’t as intertwined and inseparable from spirituality as many spiritual people think they are.
I guess you and I are speaking different languages. I don’t know what a “spiritual person” is. Or, I guess more accurately, I don’t know what a “non-spiritual person” would be. I think that spirit is as much a part of human nature as the blood that courses through us. And what you call “perceived perks of spirituality” are, for me, the evidence of that spirituality that is part of all of us. We just practice that spirituality differently, all of us. You choose to frame it within a framework od luck and science. I choose to believe that there is some creative force at work that I believe is best described as Love. And then we start down the rabbit hole again……
It’s true we’re speaking different languages. Since I’m an atheist and you’re an ordained minister, I’d be amazed to discover otherwise. The more we’ve talked and found common ground, though, the more I get the feeling that we quite often feel the same language, even if we’re not willing or able to describe it the same way. You’re convinced, for many excellent reasons I don’t share, that we all have spirits or spirituality, even those of us who don’t realize it. I’m convinced, for many excellent reasons you don’t share, that none of us have spirits or spirituality (other than in a metaphorical sense), even those of us who think we do. That seems like a pretty massive difference, and wars have been fought over it, but one man to another, I think it’s nice that we’re able to recognize that we’re both standing on common ground, regardless of which philosophical flag we try to plant on it.
And on that, we totally agree. Could it be, that in the end, we all end up in the same place, and you and I will be standing right next to each other, and you will experience it as “nothingness” and I will experience it as “paradise”? It may come right down to that, Marcus. I know for a fact that two people can witness the same event and see very different things. It may come down to the quantum reality – we see what we are looking for – and multiple realities exist at the same time. If so, I would choose paradise over nothing any day.
Yes. And if we both attend a performance of Peter Pan and clap to save Tinker Bell, it’s possible that the clapping will really and truly save a fairy’s life, even though I don’t actually believe it. I don’t think you would believe it, either, but I don’t see how a quantum theory that allows for the possibility of souls being real would exclude the possibility of fairies. If a theory allows everything, it doesn’t explain anything.
Interesting, Marcus. Every time I have tried to engage an atheist in a serious conversation about the possibility that their rational worldview may not be as tight as they think, it eventually devolves to a trivial comment about Tinkerbell. It’s almost as if atheists are reading from the same playbook. I did not suggest that quantum theory allows for everything, but it does allow that more than one reality can exist at the same time.
Before I gave the Tinker Bell example (not intended as an insult, by the way), you wrote:
The way I read that, it sounds like a belief that the act of choosing something is enough to make it one of those multiple realities that quantum theory allows for. For example, you choose paradise, therefore paradise can exist. I don’t see how that keeps out any possibilities, whether serious or trivial.
If I use an example about Vishnu instead of Tinker Bell, does it make a quantum reality where Vishnu is real more likely to you because hundreds of millions of believers take Vishnu seriously? It doesn’t matter whether I give a trivial example or a serious example of that category of belief, which I’ve been referring to as supernatural.
I have no more than a pop culture acquaintance with quantum theory, but to the extent I understand it at all, it’s explanatory power is limited to natural phenomena. If you’re using quantum theory as a metaphor to explain feelings and supernatural beliefs that can be both true and not true, I can see some truth in a truthiness kind of way, but I don’t see it working as an argument in favor of the existence of whichever supernatural phenomena you think of as serious.
Thanks for your comments. The beer offer stands.
I’m counting on it. And if you’re in Louisville, we can drink the beer of one of my other atheist friends – hey owns and brews Falls City Beer.
Sounds good to me.
Nice post. Would love to hear your thoughts about fatherhood as a spiritual path. For me, being a dad has been one of the most profound experiences of my life.