By Jim Ellis, Southwest Region, San Diego Men’s Division
Happy Fathers Day to all the fathers in the world. For these fathers and to the rest of the men within and outside of MDI, I also bid you a happy “fathering” day. For this is the day, like any other day, when we can father those in our lives.
As apposed to “mothering,” which has us doing something for another, making something easier for another, removing all challenge and test out of a situation, the “fathering” we do in our lives has us raising the bar for those we care about and those we lead. The act of fathering has us so believing in our brother that we won’t settle for anything but his best. The fathering has us trust that our men have what it takes to own their present state of success and then reach up again for higher fruits.
This doesn’t mean it’s an easy pathway. No, actually sometimes it is the tougher, more rugged and more steep road that leads to higher ground.
While the rest of the world allows for another’s mediocrity, we can hold out for excellence. While the common community may sell out friends when a word is broken, we have the chance to bring it out into the open so it can be mended, through action that makes it clean again. While men walk around with invisible arrows sticking in their backs, guts and hearts, we have the chance to awakening our brothers to the need of pulling those arrows out. While the rest of the world goes slack, allowing men to hide out in caves of convenient cowardliness, we can respectfully go face-to-face, toe-to-toe with the unconscious man just wanting to awaken again …
We can challenge him, not just for his good, and not just for our good, but the good of our bigger circles – community, society and humanity.
Happy Fathering Day! Make it great. Make your brother in arms great. Keep challenging him, challenging me. Don’t let it slide; don’t look the other way when your gut screams at you that something is off-base, that bullshit is leading the way. Speak up, show up. Be in the circle and make it count, by allowing your presence to lead your expression… purely.
We need you. Though it isn’t always a pleasant experience, we need each other to stretch to be at our best, making sure we are growing into the men we need to be – for our careers, families and communities.
We need you. We need the fathers.