I'm trying to get away from gods of power. Our culture too often equates fatherhood with responsibility, authority and respect. What about fun? No wonder fathers are so absent, emotionally and/or physically.
I think responsibility in any arena is the price of independence. Where children are concerned, responsibility means keeping up your part of the household, whether that involves doing the dishes and changing the diapers, or sending in the child support payments on time, maybe with a little extra when you can. But that's not fatherhood, that's adulthood, that's self-respect. It's not about your children, it's about you.
And authority where children are concerned usually means adults trying to make themselves feel better by controlling the kids' lives. Parents who feel they must instill respect are often struggling to convince themselves, not the children.
Children, after all, have a built-in respect for parents, and for adults in general. That doesn't mean they're polite or admiring. It means that they're programmed to listen to what you say, to watch every move you make, to learn from you, to become you in their own way. No one else can ever respect you half as much.
As for the outward forms of respect, parents of adolescents can testify that you just can't enforce them. Perhaps they must be earned.
I'm looking for a more old-fashioned god of fatherhood.
It's a commonplace among pagans that the spread of patriarchal, militaristic societies 4000 or 5000 years ago resulted in suppression of Goddess worship. Feminists among us have focused justifiably on how much was lost to women as a result. All of us have personally experienced the social deadening brought on by patriarchal sex-control, with its concomitant obsessions and phobias.
But people don't often mention that when women lost power, men became captives of their own primal fears. Patriarchy is driven by male insecurity, not male strength. The whole system, with its brutal marital restrictions, is a doomed male attempt to be surer of paternity, often at the cost of men's own playful animal joy and the gentleness in their hearts.
Recent work in evolutionary biology helps clarify the emotional underpinnings of patriarchy. Helen Fischer's The Anatomy of Love, for example, describes a pattern of mating behavior that holds true across all known human cultures and much of the rest of the animal world.
A female of a "monogamous" species chooses a mate not only for good genes but also for his ability protect her and provide food while her children are helpless. Strict monogamy doesn't make sense, however, and doesn't appear to exist. There is a selective advantage for a female to take out insurance in the form of one or more secondary lovers, to supplement her mate's support. This practice is common in the nonhuman world, and universal in every known human culture. As long as her children have good genes and prosper, the primal female doesn't care which sperm fertilized her eggs.
The male, of course, cares. He tries to discourage secondary lovers as much as possible. He does everything he can (jealousy, lots of fucking) to try to improve the odds that his mate's children carry his genes. Based on the favorable odds created by the mating bond, he nurtures and protects his mate's children. And, of course, he is notoriously fond of insurance policies of his own.
Men are bigger and stronger than women, on average, partly because women have chosen us that way over millions of years. Men pump out more of the testosterone that makes fighting obsessive and fun. In a physical fight, a man can usually beat a woman. As social organization and population density grew in late prehistoric times to the point where military conquest was the most effective way to take and hold power, male-dominated cultures became the norm.
What did we guys do, once we were in control? We started creating laws and social institutions to assuage our paternity insecurities. We followed our instincts. We screwed up. We didn't do it because we were strong; we did it because we felt impotent and scared. We wanted to control the frightening promiscuity and fecundity of the Goddess. We wanted gods and institutions to guarantee that our children carry our genes. Good luck!
Now I want to go back before all that. I seek an older god who carries a different sense of fatherhood than Kronos, Zeus or the Judeo-Christian Father. But I only find echoes of what I'm looking for. At least the goddesses were often driven underground; the gods were far more systematically corrupted. As far back as I can see, they're all touched by patriarchal obsessions.
Fortunately, I'm looking for a god, not a cake recipe. History can swallow up recipes forever, but we never really lose a god. I whisper to him, asking who he is.
I am the mate, he says, the daily lover of my Goddess, her helpmate, father to the children of her home.
What does it mean, I whisper, this being father?
Fatherhood is born in love, says the god. It begins when I give myself to the all-embracing adoration roused by a child's vulnerability.
Fatherhood lives in play, the god goes on. Playing with children, I discover life for the first time again and again.
Fatherhood dies in sacrifice, the god tells me. The staff of power, the staff of my confidence, wild joy and power comes back to me when I pass it on to each of my children.
I think about what the god says. Love, play and sacrifice.
Love, I get. I will never forget the incredible wash of emotion I felt at the birth of a child. I've always liked kids, but at that point my whole world changed.
Play, there's the key. The essence to me of being a dad is the joy and discipline of play. It's discipline because I have to persuade the child in me to get along with the sometimes tediously responsible adult. And the adult gets bored, too, with the slow pace and foreign kid concerns. What a payoff, though: I've had more fun with my kids, more satisfaction, more challenge than I've ever discovered anywhere else in life.
But power and sacrifice… these are concepts I've been trying to get away from. At the same time, I understand, children have to grow up. With what help I can give, my kids become adults and cease to be kids. I realize that I feel both blessing and loss as their personal power grows beyond mine. It is a kind of sacrifice, but one from which I only gain.
Do you have a name? I ask my god, knowing he must have many names.
For you, I am the Dagda, he says,
the wise old silly bare-assed dad,
mated to the Mother before the world,
carrying birth at one end of my staff
and death at the other.
I keep the Undry, cauldron of abundance,
to feed my children's every hunger,
to satisfy all my children's thirsts,
to let you grow to wisdom.
I've found the god I was looking for. So why am I angry now?
Where are you for the men who've never known you? And more important, where are you for their children?
I am never in the distance, says the Dagda. Don't look for me far away. Your own hungers lead you. Follow them, deeper in your heart than you can dive. Toward your deepest yearnings, you come to me.
Resentment pushes past the tears at the corners of my eyes. Why did you leave us? I ask. Where have you been?
I am never gone, he answers. Know me or not, I feed you. I am only a god, but the love the Mother and I made before the world, hers and mine mingled, is what fills the infinite seas of your hearts. Here I am.
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