What follows is an addition to the blog I published just a few minutes ago. A colleague had sent me a list of things men said fathers need to teach their son. This list had been compiled by a female who felt that her nephew needed to have more direct fatherly input in his life; the list contained items like learning to shoot a gun, canoeing, building a fire, etc. Here is what I wrote:


Yes, I'm impressed too. It connects to a continued sense I get that in our time it is females who impress upon males the need to step up to the plate of fathering/fatherhood. But there is something in that force that also makes for "predictable" answers. All the men asked now come up with somethings (sic) that a father must/should do. They're all true and kind, in a fatherly sort of way. But I believe that something much larger and less concrete underlies fathering. Something that, perhaps, fathers are scared to face and scared to name.

Just minutes ago I finished a piece on my blog--www.fathersfromthebeginning.com--a meditation, really. Things just seemed to come out of me as I was writing. In it I'm saying this: fathering is an exercise in facing, enduring and embracing the unknown. As fathers what we teach our children when we nurture them is to face, endure and embrace the unknown.

So, if I connect that to the list below, I would say "canoeing, yes, because who knows where/how far you will canoe"; "building a fire, yes, because who knows when and where will you need to build fires"; etc. It's the skill connected with the unknown.

I wonder what you think about this.

Martin