We emerge from the haze of Christmas, blinking in the light of reality into the dawn of a New Year. We emerge probably bearing new family memories of Christmas. Shared family time may have strengthened or strained us, family a haven or battle-field, or somewhere in between.
Big or small, near or far, living or deceased: family gives us roots, whether by blood, marriage, blending or adoption. We may be grateful for those roots, or forever tug at them, but we have them.
No more so is this true than our parents. Wherever our personal parental experience sits in the vast range, they root our existence. For better or for worse, in richer and in poorer, present or absent, they have shaped us. For those who have been parents themselves, you’ve experienced this privilege and pressure from the other side.
Parents can incite contradictory responses – witnessed most vividly in the typical teenager! Tugging hard at those roots in rebellious pull for independence, yet with parental reliability assumed (if unacknowledged) – the paradox of the parental bond. Do we ever fully grow out of this?
“Teach us how to pray,” Jesus’ first followers asked him. And how does he open his response? By rooting us in our parental bond with God: “Our Father, who art in heaven…” He knows this to be the root of our stability, the root of life itself. We tug away, oblivious often to the value of that bond. Certainly He wants for us healthy, free-spirited dependence, not cramped constraint. But however we respond, this Parent’s faithfulness will never break.
‘Father’ – or ‘Mother’ too? Tradition runs deep, but the patriarchy of ancient culture feels far removed from our 21st Century world. God is surely beyond our gender understanding. Yet He/She seems willing to be understood as either, wishing only to be understood as love.
Through 2023’s Rectory Notes, I’ll attempt to weave into the season and news successive lines from the Lord’s Prayer. Where this will lead I have no idea! As we start this new year, we might have made new resolutions, or be aiming for new goals. We may succeed in our family life, or fail – again. But in all these things, may we each know we are rooted in the unfailing loving parenthood of God. He roots forever for us.
