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By Bill Uetricht O


ne of my favorite parts of the liturgy that I am privi- leged to preside over comes amid the eucharistic prayer: “It is indeed right, our duty and our delight,


at all times and in all places to give thanks to you, O God.” Duty and delight! T at is life lived in the presence


of a gracious and holy God. T at is, for me specifi cally, fathering: duty and delight. Fatherhood isn’t for the faint of heart or the self-


absorbed. You must rustle yourself to respond to a cry- ing baby at 3 a.m., even though getting out of bed is the last thing you want to do. You are called to place work and career in some kind of perspective that makes pos- sible helping with child care, meals and homework, as well as being present at amazingly boring T-ball games and phenomenally hard-on-the-ears middle school orchestra concerts. Fatherhood is duty. It’s a duty that recognizes the


invitation to live in the heroic, even though deep down you realize that, truthfully, you are far from what you think a hero is. But our children need tall cedars, to borrow an image


from the prophet Ezekiel. T ey need tall and noble cedars under which every kind of bird can live and in which every winged creature can nest. T ey need our stability and strength. T ey need us to check our ram- pant desires and inclinations because someone young might be watching us.


‘Yes’ and ‘no’ Fathering not only limits the demands of the self, but also limits the demands of the self that is emerging within the child or children we are helping parent. As dads, we say not only “yes” but “no.” Children need their parents to set limits, to refuse to


give in to the cultural call to provide them with every- thing. We may even miss a T-ball game because other demands require it. Part of our duty is to make it quite clear to the child that life is not about him or her. T at can be some of the hardest work of parenting. It’s hard because our job, in a way, is to not only


provide stability but instability. Fathers especially, if you listen to the Jungian psychologists, assume the role of kicking the child out of the nest, sending him or her into the world, away from the confi nes of the comfort of home. No matter how you look at it, such sending is unsettling. As fathers, we nudge our children to risk, to leave


behind the familiar and, in some ways, turn their backs on us—a process that ultimately is for the sake of the


family. I wonder if Jesus had this in mind when he sent off his disciples into the world with challenging words about loving him more than loving mother or father. Fathering is our duty and delight. T at seems to be


what the fi rst man experienced when the fi rst woman became his partner: “T is at last is bone of my bones and fl esh of my fl esh” (Genesis 2:23). At last, someone enough like me. At last! Amazing! Finally! Fatherhood also carries some of that “bone of my


bones and fl esh of my fl esh” feeling. Even though it was 26 years ago, I remember when our son Micah poked his head out into the world. At last! Here was someone who shared my humanity, who was an invitation for me to nurture and protect. “How can this be?” I wondered— a fi tting question for those who are stumped by life’s grandness. Fathers get to participate in life’s renewal and hold in our hands life’s mystery and wonder. Two years aſt er Micah’s birth, another baby was


placed in our hands. Jacob came to us not through my wife’s labor pains, but through those of a young woman whom we did not know. Jacob’s skin was so beautiful and soſt , dark to our light. T rough the giſt of adoption, he, too, was ours, mine. Here, too, I was invited into taking care of a life that


was sheer giſt to us, whose beginnings we had nothing to do with. Sometimes the biology of reproduction can blind us to this truth. Sometimes we believe we make life. Holding and raising Jacob made me realize what a lie that is. It is all giſt . From Jacob we now have a grandson, Liam. Yes, he’s


a delight, not just because I (we) get to enjoy him and send him home but because my wife and I are now in a diff erent place—a place Richard Rohr, author of Falling Upward (Jossey-Bass, 2011), calls “the second half of life.” While the fi rst half, Rohr says, is all about establish- ing identity and defending it, the second half is about letting it go. For me, letting go has been central to discover-


ing delight. Now I know that a whole lot in life isn’t as important as it once was. Sometimes it takes until grandfather-hood to discover this. Duty and delight are paradoxical notions, and what


I believe fathering is all about. We keep these in faithful tension, remem- bering that duty is best expressed as a response to the sheer delight and giſt of fathering. 


Author bio: Uetricht is pastor of First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Muskegon, Mich.


June 2014 35


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