READING: from Gods in Every Man by Jean Shinoda Bolen

Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades were the first generation of male Olympian gods. They represent three aspects of the father archetype. They divided the world among themselves, and each held dominion over his particular realm. As archetypes and metaphors, god and realm need to be considered together: Zeus and sky, Poseidon and sea, Hades and underworld. Earth was dominated by Zeus, but not claimed as his.

Zeus ruled over all. He was chief god, and his personal attributes are those we equate with powerful fathers, kings, chief executives, officers of corporations or armies, top-dog alpha males, boss figures. Poseidon and Hades are shadow aspects of Zeus - those parts of the father archetype that men in power suppress or ignore, as well as being two separate patterns.

Biological fatherhood and the father archetypes are not related. You may read about all three of the father gods, for instance, and not recognize your own father in any of them because he isn’t there: his pattern may instead follow one of the Olympian sons, each of whom has his own characteristic way of being a father. A Zeus does not head every human family, but his influence is powerfully present in every patriarchal society.

In patriarchies, Zeus is the ruling archetype within the culture – and significant for psychology, in the psyches of men. Like the world in mythology, male psyches are divided – into (1) the conscious mental realm of power, will, and thought (Zeus), the realm of emotion and instinct (Poseidon), which is often suppressed, less valued, and sometimes split off from conscious awareness; and the dim, feared world of unseen patterns and impersonal archetypes (Hades), which often is glimpsed only in dreams.

Unlike the three gods, who represent fixed archetypal patterns, each defined by his realm, a human being has potential access to all these realms, and can knowingly move through them and integrate their aspects into his (or her) conscious personality.

The conditions under which these three ruling male gods were born still exist as a pattern in many men’s lives. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades had a distant father whose animosity toward them was based on fear that they would eventually overthrow or surpass him and a disempowered mother, who was distressed because she could not protect them or nurture them. Many of us come from such families. Moreover, regardless of our particular family of origin, we all live in a patriarchy that most values acquisition of power and favors men who succeed at this goal. This pattern, as we shall see, plays a significant part in shaping male psychology. (pp. 43-44.)

SERMON

Archetypes have their uses as models to understand some of the powerful forces that move in our understanding of ourselves. Still, sometimes I want to throw out all such material offered as descriptive of daddies, fathers, and real men. Why? Most of the material I have read on fathers emphasizes the father as competitive, abandoning, distant, unavailable – even abusive, from Bolen to Moore to the most recent New Yorker. I know there are many fathers who behave this way, and some who think this is the appropriate way to behave.

During my own life I taught “Systematic Training for Effective Parenting” to men who were sent to the class by the courts. I listened to a man tell me that “no other man would be first sexually with his daughter!” and then wondered why she went on national television to tell her story of abuse. I have spent time with men and women who never were able to get simple acknowledgement of their worth from their fathers. The same can be said for men and women and their mothers – but that is for another day. I know that many people have lived with a great empty hole where parents should have been.

But I believe that focusing on pathology helps to embed it. I don’t want to deny it, and I believe it is my task to raise consciousness that there can be another way to be in the world. Most men I know don’t relate to the Olympian archetypes; know they will never be Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, or any of the lesser gods; and still find a decent and loving way through life. I certainly see fathers and mothers in this congregation who put the lie to the literature, thank whatever powers that be. So today I should like to consider daddies, fathers and real men as some are now and all could be in an aware society.

In the process I shall offer my experiences as examples, but not exclusive of those of others: My father fit none of Bolen’s archetypes, neither the first, nor the second generation of Olympian gods. This may explain why I have a hard time with that I read about fathers to research this sermon. Surely, when Dad was pre-occupied with his scientific research he could be distant, but he also played baseball with us, taught me to drive and to row a boat, and created the most amazing bed-time stories I have ever heard – even from Dr. Seuss. He introduced me to coffee ice cream, my favorite to this day. One of the happiest days of my life, he took me – all by my self, without the other five children - rowing on a local lake and then out for a coffee ice cream cone with chocolate sprinkles. I was in heaven! For me that was my father being a Daddy.

As I understand daddies, they are playful and willing to take time with children. They actually enjoy being with their sons and daughters, creating new games, watching the stars, sharing their understanding informally, and thus teaching in the best way possible. As my spouse Judy rode the ferries from Bremerton to Seattle and back during the 1990’s, she noticed a marked increase in young men coming on board with strollers and taking their children over the waters. This sometimes entailed chases around the ferry and clapping games. I felt that was a great change in parenting from what I knew was the norm up until then.

The teaching aspect of daddies may lapse into the formal instruction of fathers, but I want to emphasize how much men impart to their children in play that is truly teaching about how to be joyful and engaged with the world. At state and national parks, I often see daddies pointing out a specially interesting plant or seeing the distant wild animals first and calling them to a child’s attention.

I also notice that daddies don’t discriminate between sons and daughters. All are recognized equally and with enthusiasm. One of the funniest examples of the possible outcomes from that approach occurred when my Dad was bathing us children. One of my mother’s supports for my father being a daddy was her insistence that he bathe us all after dinner if he did not have a rehearsal or a meeting. He would pile us into the tub indiscriminately and wash us up. One night my sister, Robin, who was about three at the time, reached over and grabbed my brother Gil’s penis, giving it a good yank. After calming Gil’s yowling, Dad gave both a lesson on respect for private parts and personal space – all age appropriate, of course. What he could not do was stop my uncontrollable laughing. I was seven, after all, and quite worldly – Hah!

But Dad was not just a daddy. Here is where we get to the role of father as creator, protector, and challenger. My father took seriously his creative part in our existence. He felt responsible and behaved accordingly. He often said that he gave us the most he possibly could at the moment of conception. Science is now bearing that out as the nature/nurture argument moves back into a 75% nature/25% nurture ratio.

When Robin asked him, when she was a youngster, why he had so many children, he answered that he wanted more people to love. As a loving father, he felt he had to provide a decent home, good food (He was a gourmand, after all!), and a good education (He insisted that I not work while I was studying in college. He got over that by the time my brother, Gil, was in college.) He took all of us out to dinner regularly so that we would know how to behave appropriately in a restaurant – and because he loved good food, and my mother was a self-proclaimed lousy cook.

My father bought a bunch of used instruments to have around the house so we could pick them up and try them out as we grew older and grew interested in music. When we showed a willingness to practice and play regularly in the school band, he would buy us the best he could afford at the time. The Conn 8D “Constellation” French horn he bought me when I became a Music Major in college is part of my life. I have willed it to my first son as part of my father’s legacy to the creative future.

My father was better known in the outside world as a creator of advanced scientific ideas, but he also encouraged creative thought amongst us children. After dinner, we would often sit around the table playing idea games. All ages were treated equally, as long as it was clear you were thinking. This is where his challenges came in, probing our thought processes and urging us to clearer thought and communication. He and my mother taught us moral decision making when we were quite young, guiding us through hard decisions with leading questions and concern for consequences. He repeated many times, “You are as free as you want, but you have to pay the consequences.” He also taught us some really creative dirty jokes.

Most of all, a father needs to be a protector. That is a role most wanted by children, I think – and the one most often not fulfilled. Children want to know that home is a safe place where someone will make sure bad things don’t happen. They want to know that someone will always be there to stand between them and danger. Of course, it is not possible to protect children from everything that comes into the home or goes on outside in the world. But we still want a protective father, rather than a competitor or an abuser.

My father could not protect me from some of the worst things that happened to me as a child, because he did not know about them. But he immediately offered to pay for counseling when he learned of those things. Moreover, he saved my life by insisting that my mother use a breast pump to help feed me when I was starving. He made it clear that anyone who messed with his daughters – or his sons - was going to have to answer to him. That meant a lot to me as a child.

My father probably did not qualify as a “real man” in the lexicon of his times because he did not engage the struggle up the ladder to success. He did not pursue a Zeus archetype. He was content to “play with the big toys” that Exxon Research provided for him and accept $1 for each patent he created for the company. He felt that he had provided well for his family when they were growing up and that he would spend his legacy as he saw fit. I guess I mirror him in that I am content with that. He did not leave me any money when he died, but he left me rich with a vision of how men could be “real men” in an alternative way to that which society had offered.

The image I saw in the world of “real men,” involved struggle, swagger, overpowering others, and denial of sensitivity. In contrast, to my mind, real men know there is an order to life, a Source from which we may live and move and have our being. My father loved music, sang and directed a men’s chorus, quoted Shakespeare and other poets, and frequently noted that he had taken the easy way through life. He did not so much “make decisions” as follow the energies as they led him. He had a genuine faith in those energies and the process of life. He listened carefully to them, evoked 65 patents from them, and helped six children become aware of them. Dad’s father was an atheist and Dad did not believe in the god of the Bible so much as he did the process of life and a “divine lure to greater intensity and harmony,” as Alfred North Whitehead describes Source. I am grateful to my father every day of my life for his legacy as a playful and teaching daddy, a creative and protective father, and a “real man,” who did not need to prove himself because he trusted the life process. “I am a living legacy to the leader of the band.”

I believe that each of us can find a man – or several - who serves as a model for a “real man” who is playful, creative, challenging, protective, and trusts life process as a Source. Perhaps the greatest lesson is to allow the awareness of possibility to be part of our lives as well as the awareness of the unhappy experiences we have had. Remember, it is never too late to have a happy childhood!

So Be It! Blessed Be!