Father's Day, contrary to popular misconception, was not established as a holiday in order to help greeting card manufacturers sell more cards. In fact when a "father's day" was first proposed there were no Father's Day cards!
Mrs. John B. Dodd, (Sonora) of Washington, first proposed the idea of a "father's day" in 1909. Mrs. Dodd wanted a special day to honour her father, William Smart. William Smart, a Civil War veteran, was widowed when his wife (Mrs. Doodad's mother) died in childbirth with their sixth child. Mr. Smart was left to raise the new-born and his other five children by himself on a rural farm in eastern Washington state. It was after Mrs. Dodd became an adult that she realised the strength and selflessness her father had shown in raising his children as a single parent.
The first Father's Day was observed on June 19, 1910 in Spokane Washington.
Her father was born in June and she had the idea of a fathers Day while listening to a sermon on Mothers Day.
At about the same time in various towns and cities across American other people were beginning to celebrate a "father's day." In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea of a national Father's Day. Finally in 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the 3rd Sunday of June as Father's Day.
Father's Day has become a day to not only honour your father, but all men who act as a father figure. Stepfathers, uncles, grandfathers, and adult male friends are all honoured on Father's Day.
Any excuse for a party, I say!
I have known people though who wanted nothing to do with Father’s Day. Mostly because they had either had a bad experience of life with a father - or the father thad not lived up to their expectations of him.
I have known people who said they were unable to say the Lords Prayer because it was addressed to a father - or they could not sing any of the hymns which addressed God as ‘father’.
I have one friend who attributes all the woes and misfortunes of his life onto his father. Every conversation soon gets round to this subject of how his father had let him down - or hadn’t understood him or didn’t help him when he needed help.
This friend was in an endless cycle of despair and he kept it turning with those conversations.
It made me begin to think I was lucky not to have had a father’s influence in my life. I was of that generation where fathers were away because of the war. After the war he went to work in Iran and sadly he died there.
He left me one legacy I was grateful for - memory of a happy christmas. It was the one time I remember. Father Christmas had been - (I don’t think many people have a problem with him) and my father shouted from down stairs ‘ you had better come quick - there must have been a hole in his sack - there are presents everywhere - and there were - all down the stairs and across the hall - paper masks, toy cars, toy soldiers, oranges, rubber balls, sets of dice even a clockwork mouse. I remember it to this day - and of course Father Christmas came with the same old sack to visit my children.
But what he was like otherwise, I have no idea. My brother and I discuss him and what life might have been like with him around - but it is only guesswork.
For me how to be a good father or a bad father was learnt as I went along - through my own experience - or was it inexperience?.
But many people find themselves in similar situations as they go along through life. We are governed by two things in life - what we have learnt and what we have experienced. Those colour everything. It requires a strong spirit to break out of the mold.
I suppose that is why I came to admire the Unitarians - especially those early ones - they seemed able to stand back and look again at life. They could find an alternative view of how things were and from that make out how things ought to be.
They kicked against the trend of perceived wisdom - and perceived religion. Theirs was not just a tradition of dissent but a tradition of discovery and seeking new meanings.
And really today's Unitarian is hardly different. Where once the Unitarians argued about the relationship of God to the Jesus - remember those old sayings, ‘The fatherhood of God, the humanity of Jesus and the brotherhood of man’ - now the quest is about spirituality.
Unitarians say that all people are spiritual people - no matter what their religion - spirituality is a special thing.
But then what is spirituality? Is it an awareness of our religion? Is it an understanding of life. Is it an understanding of our own being? Is it an experience of God?
Our reading today came from the Gospel of Mark. This is probably one of the most obtuse books of the Bible. There are arguments that this Gospel we read from is actually a watered down version of one much more esoteric - called the Secret Gospel of Mark
Mark is a gospel about spirituality - and a coded one at that! Don’t bother with the Da Vinci code - read the Gospel of Mark.
One American writer, Dennis MacDonald, claimed that it is fiction and a rewrite of the life of Jesus in the style of Homers’ great stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey - the story of a tragic character fighting against fate and eventually being killed by it.
Another said that you could read the Gospel of Mark as you would read a Buddhist text on personal enlightenment and nirvana. A process of self emptying to connect with the original spiritual self.
In our reading the disciples are in the boat crossing the lake. It is the end of the day and they have forgotten to bring enough bread with them for the evening meal
Jesus starts to talk to them about bread - as if reading their minds but they just don’t understand what he is talking about - because they are only thinking of the bread they haven’t got to eat.
He is talking about spiritual bread - the staple diet of a spiritual person - the understanding of divinity and the cosmos.
But how could they know any different - they only had their own experiences to go by - of the law and the scriptures and the examples oof their Pharisees - doing what the Pharisees did had always been the spiritual way.
How could they see it differently? How could they step outside the experiences of their own lives and look at things differently?
Why do you not understand?, he asks. Do you not have ears to hear and eyes to see?
They had already witnessed miracles - two miracles - the feeding of the five thousand and then the feeding of the four thousand - but that wasn’t a spiritual experience for them - it was just magic - a miracle.
One commentator writes about the Jesus portrayed by Mark, ‘Jesus not only speaks parables, he is a parable!’ A parable of the higher spiritual life.
After the episode of the bread - which the disciples have not understood - because they can only think about the bread that is eaten, Mark tells the story of Jesus healing the man who was blind.
Jesus first rubs the mans eyes with spittle - that is against all experience because it was a taboo thing to do in the Jewish faith - taboo to spit at anyone , let alone rub spittle on any part of their body.
And what happens? the man says, ‘I can see people but they look like trees walking’
There has been a partial awakening.
It is a point of progress but also a point of confusion. It is as far as many people will ever go spiritually. They experience something that is like an awakening - they gather a new understanding - but it is not all - it is not enough -
Often this first spiritual awakening does come through a life experience - sometimes like a road to Damascus change;
sometimes as a result of great sorrow or grief; sometimes as a result of illness or trauma; sometimes simply hearing a word or witnessing an event - like the birth of a child.
How many people do we know who will say that they have had a life changing experience - a moment with God - but then their life, their attitude to life has not changed at all - they are still eating the bread of he world?
They have come through something and see people but they look like trees walking.
Jesus then takes the man through that part two of healing - the trees disappear and people are seen as people really are - life is seen as life really is.
Through this healing the man has entered the Kingdom of God - the nirvana of true experience and understanding. He has moved into a higher spiritual state yet still lives on earth - now he sees everything differently - sees the world as a holy place - part of the whole being of godliness. Whatever his concept of divinity, he understands it and is at one with it. He knows who or what God is but there is no need to say anything - he understands and is at one with it.
He does not judge and he no longer carries the old baggage of conditions and limitations that affected his view of the world and people.
He finds the Kingdom of God is everywhere - in everything he does - in gazing at the mountain or studying the moonlit lake. The world becomes a world of art - of seeing beauty in everything - creating beauty by every action - whether it is sweeping a room, baking a cake, arranging flowers or digging the garden.
That is the symbolism of the healing of the blind man.
Most people who come to our Unitarian congregations these days are the spiritual seekers - they see people but they look like trees walking.
The spiritual seeker is not looking for a religion that teaches obedience nor a religion that claims to know the truth.
The spiritual seeker is not seeking to prove or disprove the story of Jesus, or of anyone else.
What they are looking for is inspiration - inspiration to help them see people as people and not as trees walking.
Inspiration that will help them to understand their own life and purpose within the grand scheme of the whole universe.
Inspiration to discover the experience of universal love. To know what holiness is - to know how it feels to be at one with God and with life. To be alive in the Kingdom of God.
If we only worry about how much bread we have in the boat we will never hear the words that challenge us, never see the event that stimulates us - never look for the book that will inspire us.
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