Mark's beautiful piece on Fr. Hamel's death got me to thinking of what the nature of fatherhood is all about, and how I can live it as He does for me to my kids. Being a dad isn't easy for me, and raising them without their mother 3 days a week is even harder for them. Such is life when I take into consideration all my inherent weaknesses vs. Mercy. Even though these two are in no way opposed.

When each of my children was born, at some point as soon as possible, after they first saw sunlight, I absconded with them alone and offered each back to that Mystery that gave them to us. I felt like Joseph lost somewhere in Egypt, wondering how the hell I'd raise these innocent things in our present world, begging for help and thinking back to Abraham and all his sincere attempts to follow correctly, albeit imperfectly.

Little has gone as I planned with those offerings—anathemata, as the great Welsh poet David Jones would call them-- but all has gone better than I hoped even with life's joys and sorrows pressing upon my frame. To be a parent for me is not to own or control my kids, but rather to ask Him to control them out of my neediness; they need so much more than me and my ex-wife! They are not chattel, material or spiritual. No, they are new creations that I mysteriously participated in, usually not knowing how to move forward.

I used to concern my self with so many things that were useless to my children's needs: how will I take care of these 5 (my dad had 13 of us and he didn't worry much!); how will the house of Rothchild fall so that usury and wars will begin to cease throughout the world; who will be president, and many other such silly thoughts! It would be more useful to meditate on how I will participate in my own resurrection, than how the kids will be fed, because, as my overly large family (you could call it "rabbit" family) likes to believe, that is really His job, not ours! And, more ultimately and deeply, this is the only thing in life I truly have control over.

These types of meditations bring me that elusive peace that I long for, that this world cannot give. And when the dreadful fear creeps back from that darkness that is always upon our periphery, that none of us can shake without fearless trust, I remember the faces of my friends that move me, reminding me i am really part of something much, much more beautiful than myself!