FATHER: A Mentor of Spirituality

                     “It is a wise father that knows his own child.” — Shakespeare

                                                O my father and my best friend.

                                           An understanding spirit and loyal soul,

                                         A heart of tenderness, a mind all wisdom,

                                           Knowing how justice and love to blend.

                                            A teacher, loving, patient, and kind,

                                               A rock of strength to lean upon,

                                                   In time of joy and in stress.

                                             You’re my father, you’re my friend!

                                                           (Anonymous)

When a father teaches his son, it sounds like being in the past. When a son teaches his father we have to believe that we are in the modern age. But spiritual mentoring has no past, present or future. It is timeless and is always as modern as it is old. Spiritual influence of fathers on their children—a silent but very important effect—has remained unexplained. Maybe the spirituality of mother, which naturally speaks through her unconditional love, is over-shadowing the tacit spiritual value of fatherhood. Whereas mothers continue to perform the majority of primary care-giving tasks, such as feeding, bathing, and comforting the children, fathers, on the other hand, tend to take part in supplementary activities. Fathers’ role matters less to their children’s survival but appears great in assisting their cognitive and spiritual development. As a result the quality of father’s involvement appears to matter more for children than the quantity. Father’s engagement in child-centered activities, such as helping with homework, playing together, or attending sports events and attending school plays, are a critical factor in spiritually getting connected with his children. The key is paying attention to what children are interested in and following their lead. Moreover this kind of involvement promotes cognitive development by stretching the children’s current level ability, building on what they know right now and expanding it. Such engagements help children develop not only logical reasoning but also spiritual bonding and problem-solving skills that translate into various situations in their life.

The infant needs mother’s unconditional love and care physiologically. The child after six, begins to need father’s love, his authority and guidance. Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems, with which the particular society the child has been born into, confronts him. Father’s spirituality is reflected through his love which is not unconditional like mother’s love. His love and spirituality is guided by principles and expectations; it is to be patient, tolerant, and disciplined. Fatherly conscience says: “You did wrong, you cannot avoid accepting certain consequences of your wrong doing, and most of all you must change your ways if I am to love or just like you.” It gives the growing child an increasing sense of competence and eventually permits the child to become his or her own authority. The mature offspring come to the point where they are their own fathers. In this endeavor, it is the unexpressed spirituality of a father to perform a role in nurturing his children as perfect and complete whole persons. Abrahamic religions profess that God chooses ordinary men for fatherhood to accomplish His extraordinary plan. Prophet Ibrahim is one of those men whom God had chosen as His prophet so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the God by doing what is right and just. Here is a purposeful obligation from God to every father, the purpose Prophet Muhammad (pbh) further carried on to teach the fathers of his ummah by presenting his own actions and conveying it through his “Ahadith.”

Motherly love which is the essence of her spirituality, by its very nature is unconditional. She is the home from where her children come from; she is nature, soil, the ocean. Father does not represent any such natural home. He represents the other pole of human existence; the world of thought, of man-made things, of law and order, of discipline, of travel and adventure. Father is the one who teaches the child, who shows him the road into the world. Father’s spirituality and love is tied with conditions. Its principle is “I love you because you fulfill my expectations, because you do your duty, because you are like me.” In conditional fatherly love, as with unconditional motherly love, we find both a negative and a positive aspect. The negative aspect is the very fact that fatherly love has to be deserved, that it can be lost if one does not do what is expected. In the nature of fatherly love lies the fact that obedience becomes the main virtue, that disobedience is the main sin—and its punishment the withdrawal of fatherly love. Father’s spirituality represents what God’s love is for the humans. God rewards obedience, and punishes disobedience. Its positive side is, since father’s love is conditioned, a child has to do something to acquire it; he or she has to work for it. Thus we can say fatherly spirituality is not naturally transmitted to the children, rather by seeking guidance of their father, they have to earn or derive it. They have to prove that they qualify for their father’s love and spiritual connection.

Fatherhood is about helping children become happy and healthy adults, at ease in the world, and be prepared to become fathers or mothers in the future. We often say that doing what is best for our kids is the most important thing we do. Before the industrial revolution, fathers often worked side by side with their sons and instructed their children in spiritual values. When industrialization took over fathers left their farms and headed to the factories. Fourteen-to-sixteen hour workdays set the stage for the absentee father. Eventually, fathers came to be regarded as merely breadwinners who fulfilled their paternal duties by providing food, shelter and paying for their children’s school and college expenses. Whereas in the past the industrialization took over father’s spiritual connection with his children, today the “I-Net” is chipping away their need of fatherly guidance, distracting them away from the spiritual and loving bond of fatherhood. The internet mind is depriving the new generation of an important evolutionary factor of human beings “the brain maturation and spiritual connection.” Today’s mind is poised to exploit an essentially unlimited external memory. The borderless virtual space of Internet seems to help shrink the world and links together hundreds of millions of human beings together. But this face-to-face and mind-to-mind connections does not connect humans heart-to-heart. It does not connect a child with his father not only spiritually but also cognitively. Therefore, today, helper parent’s role is especially important for promoting children’s spiritual and intellectual growth.

Parental care and acceptance influences important aspects of personality. Children who are accepted by their parents with love and spiritual connections, helps them to be independent and emotionally stable, have strong self-esteem, and hold a positive worldview. Those who are neglected, feel they were rejected and thus show the opposite—hostility, feelings of inadequacy, instability and negative worldview. A father’s love and acceptance in this regard, is as important as a mother’s love and acceptance. In fact, in the development of the children and solving their problems, a father is more implicated than a mother. Empathy, that is sharing parent’s feelings with their children, to be in tune with them, and help them feel as humans who have a soul and a consciousness, is an important characteristic that our teenagers need to develop; and fathers seem to have a surprisingly important role here, too. It has been seen that children who have fond memories of their fathers are more able to handle the day-to-day stresses of adulthood. William Wordsworth who has famously said, “A child is the father of the man,” has also said “Heaven lies about us in our infancy!” It all depends upon a Father, “A Mentor of Spirituality” to help his children keep on embracing that heaven which lies about them in their infancy.

 MIRZA ASHRAF

06/14/2014