Today’s find: Secrets of the dead

I’ve been feeling an odd sort of pressure for the past day or two – a compulsion to write something beautiful about Dad.

Odd, because he’s been dead for nearly 40 years. But his spirit looms large in me especially this time of year, near his January 31 birthday. And especially this year, perhaps – because he would have turned 100 on Wednesday.

There’s a tiny part of me that wants to pay tribute to Dad for the thing that distinguished him from most other Dads – the fact that he ran (unsuccessfully) for US Congress. Not once, but throughout the 1960s and early ‘70s. His biennial campaigns were the leitmotif of our Yard-Ape years: stamps to lick, hands to shake, speeches to hear. And through it all, we were at least dimly aware that Dad was in the spotlight – put himself in the spotlight – in a way that most other Dads didn’t do. That’s great, if you enjoy the spotlight. But there were certainly times growing up when I would have enjoyed a fuller measure of anonymity, like the other kids on the block.

“Politician,” many people called him. But that’s not the right word, in my view. He never won a general election, so therefore never wielded political power. In what sense, then, was he ever truly a politician? I suppose that’s why the urge is tiny in me to lionize this aspect of his persona on the 100^th anniversary of his birth.

I am intrigued, however, by his choosing to live such a public life. One run for Congress might be considered a lark. But eight or ten? Clearly, something drove Dad to do it, to keep after it despite the odds. And I think I find clues about his motivation when I recall his many other admirable habits of being. The secrets of this dead man, as it were…intimate memories of my marvelous Dad.

What things might you not know about him? For one, he was a voracious reader – much preferring to ingest wisdom from writers and thinkers he admired than to spend idle hours in front of the TV. This, too: He had a strong sense of civic duty that stretched well beyond his political campaigns. And more: He was a daily Communicant, and a retreat captain – someone who loved the Lord and sought to bring others closer to Jesus. As for his fatherly virtues: He was a disciplinarian…and a bit of a worrier.. Not surprising on either count, I suppose – considering the five voraciously hungry and insistently mischievous sons he and Mom poured their energy into raising.

He was, in sum, a gift to us all – a gift to his community, to his wife and family, a gift to me. He was, in a sense, the fulfilment of the promise we hear Moses making to the Chosen People in today’s first reading:

“A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen.”

“Prophet,” not “politician.” 

That sounds more like it, doesn’t it, Dad? Because a prophet spends quality time listening to God. A prophet pours out his life’s energy seeking to detect the voice of God. A prophet prays for patience and fortitude, and only then seeks to speak…to rouse up something of the Divine Energy in all those around him.

Dad had that secret in him, I think. He kept his heart soft and his ears open to God’s often subtle ways of working in the world. And he was uncommonly generous in giving voice to those ways, all the days of his life.

In his own hand, Dad did a sweet little thing to encourage me when I was a father-to-be in the early 1980s. He was my first (and best) golf instructor, too — teaching me about the game’s many mystical qualities.

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS