Father, the Man we call Dad

We all agree, Fathers' Day is Dad's Christmas and a perfect day, never mind when it happens in your hometown. You only lose sleep over who gets it first, if it's in June and someone else has until September to find the words for it!...

It's easy enough to fall into a loving mood when you love someone above the world, or just about. Even if you're a boy—someone not much used to sentiment—you can work out that this man was also the first thing you loved in your life, and find words to that effect. If you're a girl—someone who does sentiment whenever possible...—you won't have a problem expressing some of it to the man who first brought love into your life and then made you become that way all over.

We all have a fair idea what to say on this day and how to make this a Special Occasion, the hard part is how to say it so it gets to the heart, where it matters. As it turns out, finding the words to say "Thank You, Dad" comes as easy as bumping into Santa Claus on your way to work...

What do you say to the man who held you in his arms, to adore you, to revere the idea of you, then held your arm all these years, first to guide your step and keep you from falling, then to lend you a helping hand, even at times when you didn't know you had a need—and who has kept you standing up ever since?...

You'll be looking for the right words to say thanks, waiting for the right moment to show a little gratitude, some tenderness in return for a lifetime of warmth all from the one man, but it won't come out, the words never feel right, however you say it, it doesn't seem to be enough. In fact, most of us end up saying nothing at all!...

It's that we may love this man above the world, but we don't know who he is!

The man we call Dad is part of a double riddle; you could try guessing who Dad is or what he stands for—but then you'd also have to guess why God goes by the name of "Our Father"... What's that got to do with being the Lord Supreme!?...

If you wish to understand what's being celebrated on this day, be prepared to dig deep, as far back as the Big Bang!...

God is famous, not for having caused life, but because He gave it a direction!...

First consider that the world we live in is part of a greater reality. As much as we like this place, we can't help being surrounded by an immensity, which is infinite and without a limitation; call that eternity. We are born believing that life is scary because it is immense. An astronaut will tell you otherwise, however, he will humbly nod away, and say, "there's no particular direction, out there..." If you have walked between the stars, that's what you say and that's how you say it.

Fear exists, not because the universe is infinite and immense, it's that there is no orientation in space; this alone makes life a scary place.

How scary? Just think of a world without direction and what would life be without somewhere to go.

Who travels for going nowhere? We only feel alive, because we have a sense of destination. You don't need to know where you're going, as long as you have that sense. Animals know they're going when it's gone from them.

You are now a step closer to working out why The Almighty is also Our Father and how Your Dad ended up wearing that name. Meanwhile, you can see why God's Creation always had an appeal... However life appeared or why it had to be, what counts is that nothing ever appears in a space without determination. And nothing ever has appeared without a destiny.

It makes sense that "Our Father Who Art in Heaven" should still be so popular though we are turning into gods ourselves, and it's that He gave infinity a destination, whereas we get lost between two streets... Not to mention how often we shoot at our own people in a combat zone—and it's not for lack of care; our science is getting to be divine, but we are all over the place.

Our Maker gave eternity a sense of orientation, and if we call Him "Our Father" because of that, then the man we call Dad must be a permanent incarnation of this first principle, without which we would be as a child in the wilderness in many respects—or living our lives out of the Bermuda Triangle, so to speak, the rest of the time!...

PART TWO

DAD is called FATHER the same as the Almighty because he, too, has something to do with this "Orientation Thing." Many will find this fact not only true in real life, but much less confusing than to think of "Our Father" as the one who made us, which tends to be a thing Mum does...

FOR MEN, the 2006 Fathers' Day is a special opportunity to appreciate that the job of being a man consists in...