Happy Father’s Day?

They say that perception is reality, and I guess that is true on one level.

Yet on another level, if we live our lives from only that in which we perceive, then we run the risk of living our lives from what we project, fear, or desire in our fantasies rather than living our lives in reality.

Last Thursday, Ascension Thursday, was a holiday here in Switzerland. Also, unbeknownst to us Americans, it was Father’s Day in Germany.

And how did we know that?

Well, on Wednesday evening our next door neighbor, who has been so kind, welcoming, and helpful to us and who also comes from Germany, invited my boys over to make a Father’s Day present for me. She mentioned that Father’s Day in Germany is always celebrated on the Ascension.

This made me start to think.

What does Father’s Day have to do with the Ascension of the Lord?

(You can read some of the history of Father’s Day in Germany here)

As for me, I couldn’t get the connection out of my mind as I started my early morning run on Thursday. I had multiple thoughts going at the same time. (Which is not uncommon…ask my wife Amy)

First, the perception of Christianity as being a fluffy form of psychotherapy where the end result is the attempt to “feel” good or to have better self-esteem. In other words, a perception that “if we just pray” a little bit more, our troubles will vanish in thin air, and we can walk around with a perm-a-grin on our faces singing Kumbaya all day long.

My own faith reality seems to be more along the lines of G.K. Chesterton who once said:

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
-G.K. Chesterton

For the more I immerse myself into my faith, the more gritty and messy it becomes. The more I invite the truth of the gospels into my life, the more my shadows are illuminated. The more I attempt to swallow Jesus, the more I swallow a Way of being that confronts my life of contentment.

Jesus tells us that He came so that we might experience joy and an abundant life. Yet, this joy is not a feeling. This abundant life is not a fairy-tale. Joy and an abundant life seem to have their roots within the messy every day portions of our lives.

This brought me to my second thought. How social media, blogs, and any other form of communicating online projects only a small portion of our lives to the world. On one hand, our pictures can reflect a moment, a place, or a relationship that is beautiful. More so, our pictures and updates normally reflect a time when everyone is smiling. And this is good, we need that. But what our pictures don’t normally reflect are the times of pain, envy, hurt, wounds, and drudgery. And I guess that is good too.

The problem lies when we assume that our own profiles, pictures, and updates or that of others portray the full picture. This is when perception is not reality. This is when we begin to measure our lives, filled with our own insecurities and wounds, with the lives on our news feeds in social media.  This is when we begin to feel anxious.  This is when we live in fantasy. This is where we think there is a resurrection without a cross.

As for my third thought, here is a picture of my boys and me on Ascension Thursday in Interlaken, Switzerland. There we are, all smiles (on Father’s Day in Germany). And yet, what this picture doesn’t portray are the days of melt-downs, tears, yelling, and disobeying. My boys are seven and four. They are good boys on most days. They are in the midst of learning what it means to be Jack and Andrew in the world. And this will surely bring more tears and yelling I’m sure.

My responsibility to them as their father is to be Brett. I am responsible for my own “stuff,” especially when the yelling and disobeying occurs. For it is during those times that my own wounds and fears become visible in the form of rage. Wounds and fears, by the way, which have nothing to do with them. Therefore, I have a responsibility to enter into those wounds and name them for the sake of the well-being of my wife and boys. This is the work. This is the drudgery. This is painful. And yet, this is what has to take place on a daily basis to allow the smiles to occur in the picture.

In the second reading on Ascension Thursday from the Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul asks an astonishing question.

What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended into the lower [regions] of the earth?
-Eph 4:9

Christ sits at the right hand of the Father, Alleluia. Yet before He ascended, He descended into the depths of darkness. This is where we must go.

Christianity is not a feeling, it is a journey into Christ, and thus the depths of ourselves so that we might experience our own ascension. Who we are as people is not restricted to our profiles, pictures, and status updates in social media.   We are people on a journey with wounds and smiles, fears and laughter, sins and redemptions. And, being a father is less about becoming a “father,” and more about becoming Brett who is a father.

Celebrating Father’s Day on the Ascension of the Lord has invited me into a deeper understanding of ascending to the role of a father. For it has invited me once again into the journey and depths of being Brett.

A journey that descends into the “struggle” where I find joy and abundant life.  For it is here that I find the One who has gone before me.

It is here that I find Hope.

The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.
-Eph 4:10