The Wounds and Scars of Fathers

No Scar?

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?

BY Amy Carmichael

            Paul Simon wrote, "These are the days of miracle and wonder, The way we look to a distant constellation That's dying in a corner of the sky." In a world of cell-phones, online banking, homes with walls of LCD screeens, you find there are things larger than yourself-- such as your memory of Daddy.

            In a day when most boys do not know how to fix anything, do not know how to use a handsaw or hammer, when children know nothing of animals, even transitory animals (those used for food), only knowing animals as pets, and those in zoos,  when children have become "containerized" (car seats, playpens, then vans, even children in Ethiopia, there is a decline of 50% of children playing outside (playing ball, fishing, exploring the woods). In  time where children can better identify comic book characters than species of trees (pine, oak, cedar, etc.). Instead of children invading ditch banks, hunting for berries, they are allowed to play on manicured, state-controlled fields, and why not, they have yards the size of cemetery plots. Fifty-seven million homes are controlled by HOAs, who do not allow basketball hoops or roller-skating. In my state, kite flying on the beach disturbs birds. Of course the state controls beach, even to the extent of "No Smoking." In today's world, there are signs, advertising at controlled camps about the wonders of country living.

            This writer, in his youth, and even more-so since college, thought I was impoverished in my youth by country living. There is no poverty like the poverty of internet and TV addictictions. There is no theivery-robbery on earth like the robbery of television-- wasted precious time. My father did not allow a television in his house until his youngest child left for college. His youngest, like his oldest (your writer), read books. He knew that children live through their senses. Their world is not constricted by a screen of any type. Your writer, like my father, and our forefathers, were "old school." Fatherhood was more than just fertilizing an egg. Fatherhood was living the example-- hard working, tax paying, God-country-family.

            My father was the pastor's right hand man. The pastor knew he could depend on him to handle any situation. The school's principal (my father was school board chairman) knew that he could depend on my father to handle any situation at the school. If any boy gave the school a problem, the prinicpal knew that my father knew, not only the boy, but, also the boy's father. The pastor knew he always had at least one eating table, under which he could put his feet. My father so believed in God's word (observing rest on the Lord's day), that even the mules went to the pasture and rested on Sunday.

            There was a time when the church was important in the community. Church people were different. On the day of my oldest aunt's funeral, and she was buried in the ancient family cemetery, because her husband had died so long (not like most of my relatives, like my parents, who were buried in town in a perpetual-care cemetery). Her youngest son may not have remembered, but I did, our favorite cousin, who was kicked out of the church because he lost his religion for a while, got drunk, and drove his car into a ditch by the cemetery.

            My earliest family members landed in New Jersey in 1677, and founded Morristown. Think of their plight, coming over in a small boat, where 50% died on the journey, or shortly thereafter. There were no work animals (oxen, horses, mules). They raised crops by planting scarce seeds around the stumps of felled trees. Trees from which they managed to build shelter. From one generation to another, and I saw it myself with father and grandfathers, there was the butchery of food animals-- cleaning, gutting, and preparing the meat, making lard and sausage. In my grandfather's back yard, there was a patch of fennel. A great-grandfather, many years before, had planted it to use as seasoning. I noticed that more recent ancestors did not recognize it, or know how to use fennel or rosemary. Today's farmers want to live out of a paper sack, like their relatives in town. Most young people think that meat products, dairy products, eggs and the basics of cooking, just magically materialize on grocery shelves. Our farm-parents knew about farm animals, seeds, fruit trees. At my own father's funeral, one of the several preachers said, "He had his last stroke picking peaches off peach tree which he had planted." One spoke of the many heads of hair he had cut during The Great Depression, at ten cents per head.

            We are victims of Madison Avenue.  Space is used to promote advertising for fatherhood/ Father's Day. The real fathers, those building the communities, the roads, the church houses and schoolhouses, at a time when, even in my lifetime, when only 12% of families had electric power lines. I never knew a father, certainly not my father, who did not want better for his children, than he had experienced himself.

            Beyond the fringe of highways, there is a world not controlled by navigation systems. In the last years of my father's life, my mother had already graduated. His sightless, oldest son, would travel to visit him. I would call ahead and tell him at what time to expect me. The black man who drove my car would always say, "He will be sitting on the front porch, watching for you." We would take him into town for lunch, stopping on the way back to visit a relative. God help me not to surprise him as he watches for my appearance beyond this life.