Blind faith was so right...

Years and years ago I fell in love with Steve Winwood's song recorded by Blind Faith - "Can't Find My Way Home" - and it is still one of my all-time favorites.

There is a humility about going "home" to visit aging parents: not only do I see something of myself in my father's frailness, but I also see his demons more clearly. Demons, I might add, that the whole family has inherited and wrestled with in one way or another. At almost 80, my dad is a lot more gentle than he used to be - somewhat less judgmental, too - and it is clear to me that the heartbreak and tragedy he has encountered is also being slowly embraced into his soul. Interestingly, my sisters see this, too.

Now, soulwork is never easy for anyone, but American men have a particularly hard time with opening themselves to the wisdom of our wounds. In fact, as others have noted, most American men rely upon the women in their lives to help them have an emotional life. Time and disease have taken some of the women in my dad's life over the past 20 years and he has been forced to become a deeper person as the result. To be sure, he fought it with everythhing he had for a long time. But now as his own health - which he never nurtured - has also gone south on him, even his body is asking him to go deeper into introspection, patience and endurance - and it apperars that he is giving it a shot.

Once my own young daughter asked me what Springsteen's song, "Independence Day" was all about: damn, good question for one so young. In my late 30s, when I was still trying to separate myself from my father and his demons, I heard this song as pure lament. Nearly 30 years later, however, with grown children myself, I still hear the lament, but I also hear a quiet and sad tenderness, too, that is very much a part of this visit with my dad.

We still can't talk about deep emotions - that is still too far outside the box for a man of his era - but we do flirt with the meaning we've made of our respective pain by telling one another stories. Maybe that is just a man's way, yes? War stories of family and work mostly - a few times we beat the system, too - along with questions about how we respectively came to terms with things like my sister's manic depression and eventual death. As a much older guy, I have found a liberation of sorts in this - a different kind of Independence Day.

I spent part of the morning going through the bags and bags of photographs he still has of life over the past 70 years: there are pictures of him as a baby and young teen as well as countless shots of his own 6 children and all our respective loved ones and offspring. I'm bringing some of them back home to Massachusetts with me. They keep the stories alive and take me deeper into this new Independence Day. So it has been a sweet - bitter sweet - visit: I've had some good conversations with my sisters and some satisfying meals with my dad. It does my heart good to see that much of his old judgment has passed and now he is learning to take just one day at a time.

And I have been able to see something of my own journey along a similar path, too. At night, after evening prayers, I still pause and wish we might go deeper - but only for a few minutes now - because I know it will never come to pass in this realm... and that is just a fact. It is up to me to learn how to gently accept what is real about all of this and give thanks for it rather than whine for what will never be, yes? Thank you, Blind Faith, you got it so right...