No. 35 Fathers

Facilitator______________
Date___________________

Group Session Plan from FUSN (developed by Bob Zeeb)

Chalice/Candle Lighting

Opening Words:

How do we do honor to fathering in a world which has laid bare the evils of patriarchy? How do we honor our fathers in a world of greed? How, when war still haunts us daily, do we honor these our fathers? What are the attributes of manliness that we must honor in our fathers? And how are they reflected, in the mirror of their humanity? in the well of their beings? in the belly of their love?

Check-in/Sharing

Topic/Activity:
We all had fathers of one sort or another who were, in their own ways, present to us. We may, in fact, be said even to have been blessed by their presence. This does not mean that they were great heroes, or even that we were unequivocally blessed by them. It is, perhaps, more accurate to say that our beings were touched by them in complex and subterranean ways, ways we are still only half conscious of. Like the stories of our mothers, these are turbulent. But every story is, at some level, a story of gifts and grief.

What shaped these fathers of ours? How did the metaphors of their lives and the myths they projected, touch and color our own inner beings? Speak it as you, alone, can.

Select the topic and location for the next meeting

Check-out / Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

A Praise
His memories lived in the place
like fingers locked in the rock ledges
like roots. When he died
and his influence entered the air
I said, Let my mind be the earth
of his thought, let his kindness
go ahead of me. Though I do not escape
the history barbed in my flesh,
certain wise movements of his hands,
the turns of his speech
keep with me. His hope of peace
keeps with me in harsh days,
the shell of his breath dimming away
three summers in the earth
Wendell Berry