“Peace, prosperity, liberty and morals
have an intimate connection.”

- Thomas Jefferson

This was a very full weekend. It started off with my family getting to meet a new-to-us family member, my grandmother's great-niece (not sure what the proper term is — 2nd, 3rd, 4th-cousin?), and fine young woman named DeShae who is spending the summer in Minneapolis with the Youth Works ministry. This has been a season for meeting extended family, as my wife's cousin from New Mexico has two grown daughters currently in the Twin Cities as well who we've enjoyed having over to the house. We're hoping we can have all these lovely young ladies over at the same time.

That will be a good-sized group but still small compared to the crowd that turned out for the first annual Father's Day party hosted by Chief. Besides the opportunity to see many of our MOB friends it gave us the opportunity to give Kevin Ecker his birthday present. Somehow or another, Kevin had gotten the crazy idea that my wife had bought him a howitzer.



Admittedly, that would have been pretty cool, if a bit difficult to gift wrap. Instead my wife had picked up something that made her think of Kevin the moment she set eyes on it.



Unfortunately we couldn't stay late at the party because we had to head up to to Brainerd Saturday evening in order to be on hand to conduct the chapel service during the opening weekend at the Parker Boy Scout Camp. Instead of staying at the camp we stayed at my brother-in-law's nearby lake cabin. It's quite cozy, but surrounded by hordes of hungry mosquitos. We grabbed our bags from the car and made a mad dash to get inside but a couple of dozen of the little blood-suckers made it in the door with us. It could have been a long night, but my daughters decided it was a suitable time to give me my Father's Day gift: the bug bat I had said I wanted a little while back. It looks like a badminton racket, but in place of strings it has wires that you can electrify by pressing a button on the handle. What a fly or a mosquito (or perhaps a parakeet) and ZZZZZTT! — instant crispy critter. I, of course, got to try it out first and if you think my maniacal glee was a bit effusive you should have heard the Mall Diva and Tiger Lilly! "Hahlo, I am the Mall Diva, you bit my sister. Prepare to die!" I christened (actually, you shouldn't get it wet) the newest addition to our arsenal as "Old Sparky". This morning we again had to run the gauntlet to the car, during which many more skeeters tried to come along for the ride. The Diva was on the job, however!



The chapel service went great, though we were almost late due to having to take some unexpected detours. The Reverend Mother had planned to do a specific message for this morning, but with the news of the scout camp in Iowa getting hit by a tornado last week (killing four scouts), she decided on a different approach, including a special song by the Mall Diva. She once again was able to work the flash paper into her short message and it went over famously, as always. Afterwards two of the scouts even came up to us and, in unison, shouted "Best church ever!"

After that it was time to come home and complete the Father's Day assignment given by the Mayor of the MOB, King Banaian, in his decree, that being to grill meat. Since we know King is a vegetarian, however, we (Ben, the Diva and I) felt we needed to prepare a special course in his honor:



Finally, it was good that we had so much to do throughout the weekend since it kept me from dwelling too long on the meaning of the holiday. It was the first Father's Day for me without my father, and there were a a few tough moments throughout the weekend when things that happened would remind me of him. I expect this will be an ongoing experience in years to come. There was another first this year as well; I got my first Father's Day card from prospective son-in-law Ben, something I also anticipate more of in the coming years!

Here's a flashback for Fathers' Day: back when the Mall Diva was 2-3 years old her mom worked second shift and the little diva and I spent a lot of afternoons and evenings together, often watching Duck Tales and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One of our most favorite things, however, was to watch the Adrian Belew "Oh Daddy" video, which featured Belew's own 11-year-old daughter, Audie, singing and dancing. I'm betting Mall Diva can still sing every word of that song.

Belew is a fabulous musician who has played on some of my favorite songs from Frank Zappa, The Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel. There's no song, however, that will stir my emotions as much as "Oh Daddy."

So many thoughts this week leading up to Father's Day. It was Father's Day last year when we first faced the possibility of cancer coming back into my father's life. This morning I spoke for awhile with a father of two young girls who is struggling with their discipline, taking me back to the early days with my own daughters...and then naturally to my oldest, now casting major plans of her own for adulthood. So many things, tumbling around, I'm not sure what will come out here in the coming week, but I think I'll start things off with one of the first "fatherhood" posts I ever did here.

Dad to the Bone

Every parent either knows - or feels - by heart the words to the "Sunrise, Sunset" song in "Fiddler on the Roof":


Is this the little girl I carried,
is this the little boy at play?


When I hear this the memory that flashes in my mind is not that of carrying either of my two daughters up to bed, or of piggyback rides. Instead I think of a family photo a few years ago. In it my girls - then about 10 and 5 - and I have been wrestling. I am standing and in each hand I've got an ankle of one of the girls and I'm holding them both upside down and off the ground, not unlike a proud poulterer holding up a couple of prizewinners at the State Fair. Imagining the picture now I can still hear the shrieks and giggles.

At this point in their lives - and for this moment now permanently frozen on film - I am Dad the Undefeated and, in their eyes, larger than life. Meanwhile, in the moments that I write this, the next line from that song is passing through my mind: "I don't remember getting older, when did they?" If asked to reenact the scene today my response would have to be, "One at a time."

As I flip through my mental photo album the girls seem to grow suddenly in a series of jerks and jumps. Of course I know they are really changing everyday, judging by the continuous trips to the shoe store and cries of, "But I just bought you those pants!" I also can't help noticing in this album that as they are getting bigger, I seem to be getting - perhaps ever-so-slightly - smaller.

Once when my oldest was very little and concerned that we might be imminently attacked by bears in our own front yard, she was greatly comforted when I assured her that if any bears came near her I'd grab them and twist their noses. Today the same promise still stands regarding boys, not bears, but it's clear that my powers are coming more into perspective. While there are times when it may seem, in my daughters' eyes, that I can still rise up and blot out the sun, I cannot stop it from moving across the sky. I am shade, however, standing between them and the heat of the world. I will continue to do so as long as I can stand.

Of course, brute force has always been of limited application. To be a proper protector my defenses have had to be - and must remain - more subtle. Jesus once told his disciples that it was better for them that he go away. His meaning was that his power both in their lives and in the world would ultimately be much greater by his living in them rather than with them. I don't construe this to mean my girls are better off without me, but rather that I must devote my time with them to preparing them to live on fruitfully, just as Jesus did in his three years with the disciples. The time together already seems all too short.

When they were little, their well-being depended on instant obedience to my authority and that of their mother. It was not expected or accepted of them to ponder whether or not we meant what we said or whether our instructions supported their personhood or hurt their self-esteem. "No," "stop" and "don't" could keep them from a boiling pot, a busy street or a strange dog. As they get older they are still at risk from natural forces, careless strangers and unpredictable animals interested only in their own gratification. "No," "stop" and "don't" might still have an effect, but it's better to teach them the underlying reasons and standards for moral conduct so they can also work out the "Yeses," "do's" and "go-for-its." In that way my influence can carry on a lot further than my authority will ever be able to.

For my influence to be effective, however, I have to keep learning and examining myself both for my own benefit as well as theirs. Like it or not, my life will be a standard that my daughters will use to judge men on in the future and I want to set the bar pretty high with no apologies to the young fellas coming along. Perfect or not, it is mine to carry. On one level my girls may see me as "Dad of Dads, Keeper of the Remote and King of Rude Noises," but they should also know at a deeper level that I have laid and will lay down my life for them. As they grow older I hope that they will not settle for any man who will not do the same, even though the kind interested only in the "lay down" part may be all too common.

If you have daughters I think you know what I mean, and I hope you, too, are preparing yourself and them to live by your influence and that of Jesus while submitting to the authority of God. If you have sons, I pray that you are preparing them to a similar standard and helping them grow into their own responsibilities.

And if you have sons that may be hanging around my daughters, you might want to warn them about that nose thing.