Manchester

“When I was my father’s son,…he also taught me, and said to me…” –Pro. 4:3-4

One of my 25 cent books from the Friends of the Library sale grabbed my attention and imagination last week and ended up to be an engrossing read. Goodbye, Darkness is a memoir of the Pacific campaign during WWII by William Manchester, an author I had grown to admire for his biography of Douglas MacArthur. In the 1970’s, Manchester revisited the places he had gone ashore in battle against the Japanese as a young Marine. It was on Tarawa, known to many as “Terrible Tarawa,” that he pondered as to where the courage, dedication, and steely discipline came from as he recounted how wave after wave of U.S.Marines suffered terrible casualties in taking that small but well fortified island. His conclusions staggered me especially as they came from a man who was not naturally inclined to patriotic flag waving or righteous grandstanding.

He had to admit that the America of WWII was different from that of today, and there was no way of understanding the way its sons threw down their lives so willingly and almost carelessly without understanding the culture of that time. He describes the United States of pre-WWII as a tightly disciplined society with rigid standards and where “counterculture” did not exist as either a word or a concept. And here is the lengthy quote which came so unexpectedly:

“The bastion of social stability was the family. Children were guided, not by radar beams picking up trends and directions from other children, but by gyroscopes built into their superegos at home. Parents had a tremendous influence on them. If adolescents wanted to read pulp magazines, or smoke, or listen to Ben Bernie or the Lucky Strike Hit Parade on the radio, they needed parental permission; if they wanted to see ‘The Philadelphia Story,’ their fathers decided whether or not it would be bad for their morals; if they made money shoveling snow or cutting lawns, their fathers, again, told them whether they should save it for college, or, if it was to be spent, what they could buy. There was no teenage ethos; indeed ‘teenage’ meant ‘brushwood used for fences and hedges.’ Young people were called ‘youngsters,’ and since the brooding omnipotence of the peer group had not yet arrived, children rarely felt any conflict between their friends and their families. No youngster would dream of discussing familial conflicts with other youngsters. An insult to either parent had to be avenged. …Fathers had always ruled like sultans, but the Depression had increased all family activities over which patresfamilias reigned; a study of over a hundred families in Pittsburgh discovered that a majority had increased family recreation – Ping Pong, jigsaw puzzles, checkers, bridge, and parlor games, notably Monopoly. There was also plenty of time for the householders, the doughboys of 1918, to explain to their sons the indissoluble relationship between virility and valor.” (p. 247, copyright 1979; Little, Brown & Co.)

There; a long quote but one which so many of you should find encouraging. I see you doing these very things today; instilling those “gyroscopes,” attempting to shield your children from the “brooding omnipotence” of modern teen culture, instilling “absolute” notions of truth and morality, and keeping your families together at all costs. Some of you may have thought you were alone and bordering on the bizarre. Take heart. You stand in the grand tradition of those who raised what Tom Brokaw has labeled “The Greatest Generation.” I grow increasingly impressed with what those young men did who pushed back the forces of evil in WWII at such great expense. I have high hopes for our young people, as well, in standing against the Evil One who comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy. Keep up your good work.

dogs

“Correct your son, and he will give you rest…(and) delight to your soul.” - Pro. 29:17

I had the pleasure of making two new friends this last weekend. Completely friendly and entertaining, they accompanied me on a camping trip into the heart of the Big South Fork wilderness. As I got to know them, as one naturally soon does with spending a little trail time together, I came to have a deep admiration for the boundless joy that these two showed in embracing the outdoors but also their sense of restraint for the boundaries of others. They didn’t say a lot, but they were well mannered individuals that quickly warmed up to complete strangers. Their names were a bit odd, Sidney and Indy, but they shared the cold, the stream crossings, and the hard ground with not a word of complaint. It was all great fun to them, especially when the scent of a bird crossed their path or when told to fetch a branch or a pug thrown into the woods. They were dogs, after all; Sidney the black lab and Indy, the short-haired pointer.

The two had been carefully chosen as pups by my two separate friends and each reared with careful training for a specific purpose in mind. Sidney was becoming the skilled retriever that a duck hunter depends upon. Indy was being groomed as a bird-hunting dog. Each had been the object of countless hours of careful training by their masters. I was amazed to see them come on command, heel, and lay down at just a single word. Sidney would obediently watch as her pug was thrown into the woods beyond a stream. She waited until the word was given to retrieve. Then she bounded up and brought back her “prey” until told to sit on the other side of the stream. She sat picture-perfect still with the pug in her mouth. On command, she returned the rest of the way and “held” the pug gently in her mouth until given the command to “give.” In camp, each of the dogs would lay obediently on the ground in their assigned positions if they got too carried away by frisky play. At the word “kennel,” they would go back to their respective tents and await further instructions.

I was intrigued by the devotion, obedience, and joy which these man and dog teams exhibited. Questioning revealed the training involved. The effort was considerable. I, being the grandfather, immediately challenged them to exercise similar effort and care in raising their future children. They admitted that it was great preparation. Indeed. There were things to be learned here. They had done many of the right things. Sidney’s owner told of seeking out help from someone who had knowledge and experience in training. Ahh! Lesson number one. When raising sons and daughters, it is wise to not go-it-alone but to seek out the counsel of others who can speak from wisdom and experience. Smart.

What he was told was that there were three things to remember in any training program: care, calm, and consistency. Not bad words to remember in the raising of children, I thought. Care – that tangible and unqualified expression of love and concern for the child that is clearly expressed in countless ways. Calm – that disciplined sense of self-control that communicates order, steadiness, and self-assurance. Consistency – that day after day evenness that produces reliable expectations and uniformity of results.

I also saw these animals imbued with a sense of purpose and given the skills to accomplish these ends. We can’t order up children according to a desired propensity, but we can awake in them a sense of purpose in the grand scheme of the kingdom of God, help them discover their individual giftedness, and equip them for a productive life. The result: great teamwork of parent and child where each becomes a joy to the other and a pleasure to behold. The things you learn on camping trips!

Fathers

When I was a boy in my father's house, still tender, and an only child of my mother, he taught me and said, "Lay hold of my words with all your heart; keep my commands and you will live. –Pro. 4:2-4

If you read the Scripture at top, you probably agreed in your heart that it is a very good model of how things are supposed to be. Yet, how many of us had dads who did this, who took us aside and spoke tender words of comfort and wisdom into our souls? Precious few, I suspect. I never experienced that. But at least he was there in my life, a rugged block of a man who knew hard labor as his business and faithfulness as his duty. We celebrated father’s day last Sunday, which always makes the card companies happy and means that I might get to make a request for dinner. But as a nation, we evidently are doing a pitiful job of appreciating the role that fathers play.

Kathleen Parker reports that “a 1999 study of how fathers were presented in 102 primetime TV shows, the National Fatherhood Initiative found only four in which a father was portrayed as present and involved in his children’s lives.” You know the typical drama. Dad is a bumbling fool at best or absent and hopeless at worst. And “at the same time little boys and girls are seeing bad, dumb daddies on TV, more than a third don’t live with their own father, owing either to divorce or single motherhood.” And yet we know “study after study shows an association between fatherlessness and a wide range of social pathologies, including drug abuse, promiscuity and delinquency.”

Fathers do have a strong influence upon the lives of children even if they are not chiseled from the Book of Proverbs. Susan Estrich wrote a tearful testimonial last week about how her father was far from perfect. “He smoked and drank and married the wrong woman. He went months without seeing me. He didn’t buy me presents or pay my tuition. …But I loved him so.” Thirty years later she still misses him.

But when the dad-role is played well, it can have a huge impact upon families. As a man, I often thought my influence was rather minimal when walking in the door at the end of a day to see the whirl of family activity going on about me. I did not cook the meal on the table, clean the house, wash any of the clothes, or help anybody with the homework of the day. I possessed only a fraction of my wife’s knowledge of the world in which my children moved and had their being. But to think I did not matter is a totally false and deprecating assumption. Theodore Roosevelt called the Presidency of the United States a “bully pulpit” for he rightly knew that the words he spoke from it would echo near and far. The high and holy position of “father” is also a “bully pulpit” as well that begs to be used for good.

Roosevelt’s father spoke these words into his young son’s life as he was going off to college. “Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies.” Theodore Roosevelt idolized his father and bound those words tightly to his heart. So much so, that his modern day biographer offered bemused wonder at Theodore’s commitment to purity before marriage. How many young men go off to college today so challenged? Not long after, Roosevelt’s father died and in his grief in pondering his future he wrote, “Oh Father, my Father, no words can tell how I shall miss your counsel and advice.”

May you dads realize that you are standing on holy ground. Your daily footsteps leave imprints that will follow you in the lives of your children for generations to come. You are more than just a paycheck. Much, much more.